The soft-edged shadows glimmer with frost; the stripes of dim sunlight glisten. Only the Carolina wren insists on clarity, clarity, clarity.
sunrise
The fourth-quarter moon is the thinnest of Cheshire-Cat grins among the treetops. Sunrise reddens the western ridge. A nuthatch calls.
A bald-faced hornet nest hangs abandoned from the top of a birch. The sun finds a new hole in the forest and blinds me as it tops the ridge.
Cold and clear. A whitish gnat zigzags toward the woods, following a sunbeam, like an anadromous fish ascending its native creek.
A murky sunrise. Gnatcatchers high in the tulip tree dart and hover, tiny silhouettes against a cross-hatch of stratus clouds.
At sunrise, two bird calls I associate with early spring: blue-headed vireo and chickadee. But the breeze is warm, the sun a lurid orange.
Sun struggles through the humid air: a golden glow. The leaves look twice as big as yesterday, animated by the buzzy calls of warblers.
The sun clears the ridge and disappears behind a dark lid of clouds. The wind which a moment before felt envigorating is now simply cold.
Clear and cold at sunrise. A nuthatch on the dark side of the tall tulip poplar reverses course and ascends into the sunlit crown.
Out in time for the second sunrise, when the sun clears the near ridge and appears among the trees, an impossible blossom.
Woodpeckers drumming at sunrise. It occurs to me that they might not be telegraphing “I am here” so much as verifying that the world is.
A cold wind at sunrise. Daffodils nod, while the forsythia shakes its yellow fingers in a vaguely apotropaic gesture. Hard frost on the way.
Ground fog up in the field glows faintly orange in the sunrise. Under the old dog statue, a cartoon yelp of yellow: the first daffodil.
Sunrise. The bluebird warbles once, as if unsure whether it really will be that kind of day. The cardinal keeps singing his one good note.