Bitter cold. A few small clouds turn brick-red. When the wind drops, there’s a staccato burst of pileated woodpecker alarm, answered only by a nuthatch.
sunrise
December 11, 2024
A dark and rainy dawn. Will anything mark the hidden sunrise? Yes: three crows fly right over the house, yelling. The rain continues.
December 8, 2024
The first sunrise above freezing in weeks. The sun climbs into the palest shade of blue as treetops sway and gyrate in the wind. A chickadee sings his springiest tune.
December 5, 2024
Wind and snow—a fresh two inches on everything. Sun-colored holes open in the gray clouds and swiftly close again. The cold creeps in through my coat.
December 4, 2024
After an orange sunrise, in the ordinary light of an overcast morning, the mechanical tapping of a downy woodpecker, the slow wingbeats of a raven.
December 3, 2024
A stray snowflake wanders down from the pink clouds, itself still white. Doves flock to the birdseed on my mother’s back porch—the silvery whistles of their wings.
December 2, 2024
Overcast and cold. Ten minutes before sunrise, a yellow rent appears in the clouds. In the distance, the neighbor’s chickens start up a racket.
November 26, 2024
Rainfall stopping by sunrise. An oak leaf comes sailing out of the woods and spirals down onto the porch. Holes in the clouds open and close like blue wounds.
November 24, 2024
Light rain at sunrise swept away by a light breeze, the monochrome sky accented by a pair of ravens, and down here a nuthatch going over the rules.
November 21, 2024
A red dawn, a redder sunrise, and a rain shower half an hour after that on the still-novel metal roof. I imagine a steel-pan drummer playing avant-garde calypso.
November 19, 2024
Sunrise reddens the western ridge from under a lid of cloud. Three white-throated sparrows squabble under the lilac, their chirps mingling with the distant cheeps of a truck going backwards.
November 18, 2024
Moonlight at dawn, only to cloud over by sunrise. A pileated woodpecker flies in a tight circle among the trees, as if lost, before launching himself out into the yard.
November 16, 2024
Windy and gray. The only signs to distinguish the sunrise are a sudden outburst of crow calls in the distance and an upwelling of white-throated sparrow song.
November 13, 2024
Clear, cold and still. Sunlight refracted in heavy frost glitters in all the colors of the rainbow.