The western ridge glows orange with sunrise under a lid of clouds. It’s very quiet. I can hear the soft, inquisitive chirps of waking birds.
sunrise
Thursday January 23, 2020
Sunrise: a glimpse of yellow from beneath the lid of clouds. Goldfinches flutter down to drink from the stream’s thin fissure of open water.
Monday December 31, 2018
Dawn. A Carolina wren drops like a ninja from its roost in the old hornets’ nest. The sky between the ridgetop trees turns to blood.
Monday December 03, 2018
The western ridge shines golden against dark clouds for a few minutes before the sun goes in. A gunshot. The gurgling of the stream.
Tuesday October 30, 2018
Two tulip poplar leaves vibrate in a private wind: chickadees. The western ridge turns from blood-red to orange to yellow—autumn in reverse.
Saturday September 01, 2018
Sunrise illuminates the hidden rooms of the elder tree. In one, a blackbird grooms, starting the day with the taste of its own feathers.
Monday October 23, 2017
Brighter color between the trees: sunrise. Gray as their trunks: a doe and her grown fawns. From down hollow, a screech owl’s trill.
Friday September 22, 2017
Under dark clouds, the field full of goldenrod glows in the rising sun’s light like some Viking hoard in an archaeologist’s trench.
Saturday February 11, 2017
Ten degrees above freezing at sunrise. A squirrel leaps through the soft snow like a salmon swimming upstream. High overhead, a raven calls.
Saturday December 31, 2016
Cold and very still. The sun climbs through the ridgetop trees as slowly and bristly as a porcupine of light.