Hazy and humid. The sun in the crown of the big dead maple. A hen turkey putting like a slow motor, summoning her chicks.
sunrise
June 9, 2022
Just past sunrise, a clearing wind. I look up from the Eastern Europe of my book to flame-bellied clouds, the forest all astir.
May 31, 2022
Treetops rusty with sun. Worm-eating warbler—or is it a chipping sparrow? That dry rattle. A pair of mating craneflies goes unsteadily past.
May 2, 2022
Sun through thinning fog—prismatic beads of water twinkling from every twig like the souls of dead leaves. It feels almost masochistic to turn my eyes to my book.
April 15, 2022
Clear and cold. Sunlight fills the tall tulip tree, which is shaped like martini glass, from the top down. A woodpecker duets with his echo.
April 11, 2022
Clear at sunrise but with enough high-altitude murk to turn the western ridge red. A lone goose flies over, honking.
April 9, 2022
A hint of yellow in the east soon fades to gloom. It’s one degree above freezing. Tiny silhouettes in the crown of a black birch—kinglets?
April 8, 2022
Crystal-clear. Treetops stained with sun. A gray squirrel pours itself into the lilac. The creek’s full-throated chorus.
April 7, 2022
Dark and rainy at sunrise; ridgetop lost in fog. Down in the boggy corner of the meadow, one spring peeper is still calling.
April 4, 2022
Bare branches mellowing the sun’s blaze. Two crows fly into the woods and one flies out. There are eight million stories in the naked forest.
March 29, 2022
Still bitter cold, but the wind has died. Clouds redden. A phoebe snags breakfast from the bark of a tree like a nuthatch.
March 28, 2022
Bitter cold at sunrise. The usual singers are subdued, except for one dove. The occasional bang of heartwood split by ice.
March 21, 2022
Deep blue sky; two degrees above freezing. As the sun climbs out of the trees, the morning chorus dies down until it’s only the Carolina wren.
March 14, 2022
Sunrise reddens the western ridge and its whine of traffic. Cardinal song. With my last sip of tea, the sun strikes my face.