Sunrise pink fading to orange. The woods’-edge green grows more intense, and the birdsong more diverse.
sunrise
Just enough upper-atmosphere haze to soften the sun from glare to glow. Today the hepaticas will open—I’m sure of it.
Sun climbing every tree at once. A hollow snag mutters like a stomach with its cargo of squirrels.
Sunrise. I watch the trees grow shadows and pelts of sunlight. Anyone rooted can become a gnomon: from the Greek, an expert or interpreter.
A ray of sun strikes the lilac, setting its yellow buds aglow. The sound of water gurgling under my yard. The back-and-forth of nuthatches.
Can daylight be saved? An hour late, I watch the sun assemble itself among the ridgetop trees one blazing shard at a time—a kind of kintsugi.
Sun in the tops of the pines. The sine curve of a pileated woodpecker’s flight path over the house. Her mad cackle after she lands.
Clear and cold. The scattered, jubilant cries of six swans—too few to form a chevron—passing high overhead, bellies pink with sunrise.
After yesterday’s melting, the snowpack is a maze of wrinkles. The ridge turns orange. A hundred robins appear in the yard.
Overcast at sunrise. The cak-cak-cak of a Cooper’s hawk beginning to think about courtship and nesting, somewhere up in the snowy woods.
Bone-achingly cold. A squirrel navigating the tulip tree walks on the undersides of snowy limbs. Sunrise stains the western ridge blood-red.
Bitter cold (-16°C) and still. The rising sun appears in a tiny gap between the trees as if this is all we’re allotted, this bristly thing.
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.
Bitter cold. Clouds hide the sunrise, but the crows still herald it. The squirrels appear to be staying in their nests.