sunrise

Tuesday October 11, 2016

Dave Bonta October 11, 2016

Sunrise turns the western ridge red. A squirrel falls out of a walnut tree and lands with a thump in weeds white with the first frost.

Dave Bonta September 22, 2016 1

Clear and cold at sunrise. A migrant thrush calls from the not-yet-ruined temple of the trees. Overhead, the archaic smile of the moon.

Dave Bonta September 11, 2016

Cool and clear, with sunlight just beginning to gild the treetops. From the woods’ edge, the plucked-string call of a migrant tanager.

Dave Bonta August 5, 2016

Sunrise. A deer grazes at the woods’ edge. A phoebe perches beside her and makes repeated sorties over her back, snapping up the deerflies.

Dave Bonta August 2, 2016

Fog glowing sunrise-orange. Sound is out of the east: traffic, freight trains, the crusher at the quarry. A chickadee sings both his songs.

Dave Bonta April 17, 2016

The raspy call of a red-winged blackbird, rare visitor to the mountain. A lone Canada goose goes over, honking steadily. The sun comes up.

Dave Bonta March 23, 2016 1

Sunrise, and seven species of birds are calling—but not the phoebe, who flies in and out of the old nest under the springhouse eaves.

Dave Bonta March 11, 2016

Sunrise tints the clouds orange. I squint through eyelids made bleary with pink-eye and lack of sleep. A downy woodpecker’s soft rattle.

Dave Bonta October 27, 2015

With the leaves half down, I can see inside the forest again: squirrels leaping from branch to branch, a ridgetop flock, the rising sun.

Dave Bonta September 15, 2015

Sunrise stains the treetops. The woods are full of anxious-sounding calls: chipmunks, jays, nuthatches, an endlessly scolding squirrel…