Bitter cold at sunrise. A distant F-16: that high, harsh sound of something being torn. A few small clouds hurry off toward the sun.
sunrise
1/17/2011
A titmouse lands in the cherry, the streak in his breast the same rust as a tree sparrow’s cap, a broomsedge stem, these icicles at sunrise.
1/6/2011
In the still air, a small disk of ash falls spinning like a demonic snowflake. The sun smolders on the ridgetop between columns of oaks.
1/1/2011
Gray sky thin as an eyelid for the sun’s approximate blaze. The distant gargles of an 18-wheeler jake-breaking into town set off the crows.
12/29/2010
Feathery contrails outline a wedge of blue. On a high branch, three mourning doves sit facing the sunrise. The middle one preens its wings.
12/21/2010
Solstice sunrise turns the western ridge red as an altar. A brown creeper fishes in all the dark valleys of the walnut tree’s bark.
11/28/2010
I arrive on the porch at the same time as the sun: the first blazing quills top the ridge and a sneeze begins to prickle behind my nose.
11/2/2010
Five below zero Celcius at sunrise. A single kinglet flutters in the birch—its whispery chirps. The fourth-quarter moon’s thin grin.
9/19/2010
A succession of anxious or querulous calls—nuthatch, crow, Cooper’s hawk, pileated woodpecker—until sunrise reddens the western ridge.
7/31/2010
At 52 degrees, hornets are already going in and out of their gray globe in the weeds. I watch the sunrise by inference on the western ridge.
5/10/2010
A chipping sparrow foraging below the porch at sunrise flits up to a branch with a beakful of fine, gray, nest-lining material: my own hair.
4/5/2010
Yellow at daybreak: forsythia, daffodils, the spicebush by the springhouse, a flock of goldfinches… what else? The sun crests the ridge.
4/2/2010
Sunrise, and a red-winged blackbird calls twice: sound like a blood-shot sun half-submerged in dark feathers, part trill, part gurgle.
3/22/2010
Rain from what must be thin clouds. The sunrise glow lights up a deer at the wood’s edge, bright as litter against the brown leaves.