Sunrise and the clouds turn pink as the waning crescent moon turns pale. A squirrel way up in the woods begins its trek to the bird feeder.
sunrise
January 28, 2021
Bitter cold. Clouds hide the sunrise, but the crows still herald it. The squirrels appear to be staying in their nests.
January 21, 2021
The first stripe of sunlight to make it through the woods follows the 200-year-old colliers’ trail. In thin snow, the cuneiform of sparrows.
January 20, 2021
Just after sunrise, the side of the ridge where fresh snow is sheltered from the wind turns pink, until the clouds close in with their flaming bellies.
January 18, 2021
A few minutes till sunrise; the wren sounds impatient. But the clouds are heavy—overflowing, in fact. It’s light enough now to see the flakes.
December 23, 2020
Out before sunrise, I watch the sky on the weather app switch from black to blue in less than a heartbeat. Then the slow blood-reddening of the ridge.
December 13, 2020
After a red sunrise, the sky turns dark for St. Lucy’s Day. But who needs candles? My outrage at our broken politics is incandescent.
November 21, 2020
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.
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.
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.
December 3, 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.
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.
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.
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.