Cold at sunrise. A squirrel gathers clumps of dry leaves from the last oak to still have them and stuffs them into the top of a hollow snag.
sunrise
The clouds part just above the horizon, where a weak sun glimmers like a bonfire among the skeletal trees. Distant shots ring out.
Traffic through the gap is loud this All Saints Day morning. Sunrise reddens the western ridge, and a thin mist rises from the snow.
Sunrise, and the sky is clear. From behind the red ridge, two train whistles blow at the same time in different keys. A car door slams.
Overcast at sunrise, with a cool breeze. A gray catbird in the middle of the gray driveway picks pebbles for the collection in its gizzard.
Goldfinches twitter in the tops of the locusts at sunrise, bright as beacons. A yellow hoverfly watches me from four inches away.
Sunrise stains the western ridge. A squirrel wanders back and forth on an icy snowbank, stirred, no doubt, by the memory of a buried nut.
Bitter cold at sunrise. A distant F-16: that high, harsh sound of something being torn. A few small clouds hurry off toward the sun.
A titmouse lands in the cherry, the streak in his breast the same rust as a tree sparrow’s cap, a broomsedge stem, these icicles at sunrise.
In the still air, a small disk of ash falls spinning like a demonic snowflake. The sun smolders on the ridgetop between columns of oaks.
Gray sky thin as an eyelid for the sun’s approximate blaze. The distant gargles of an 18-wheeler jake-breaking into town set off the crows.
Feathery contrails outline a wedge of blue. On a high branch, three mourning doves sit facing the sunrise. The middle one preens its wings.
Solstice sunrise turns the western ridge red as an altar. A brown creeper fishes in all the dark valleys of the walnut tree’s bark.
I arrive on the porch at the same time as the sun: the first blazing quills top the ridge and a sneeze begins to prickle behind my nose.