Clear and cold. The sun pops up—the pea in our daylight-savings shell game. A screech owl begins to trill.
sunrise
Red sky behind red leaves at sunrise. In the yard, big winds have stripped the tulip tree of all but its smallest leaves—the sheerest of dresses.
Wind breaking up the yellow-bellied clouds. Tulip tree samaras spin like the blades of invisible helicopters—a whole squadron headed out into the meadow.
Steady rain from heavy clouds, with the seeming glow of orange and yellow leaves in lieu of a sunrise. A drenched gray squirrel beside the porch peers up at the sky.
Overcast with an orange sunrise glow. Jays, the cardinal, a towhee. A winter wren burbles quietly beside the springhouse.
Crystal-clear. A Cooper’s hawk calls from the top of the tallest tree in the yard as sunrise reddens the western ridge.
Mist dissipating into blue. The walnut trees on the north side of the house are now nearly bare, even as the one on the south side is still more green than yellow. The sun briefly blazes through a new hole in the hillside canopy.
Canada geese, a screech owl, some crows, and the inevitable wren sing in the sunrise, the western ridge turning red under a flat-tire moon.
Another cold sunrise. A distant Carolina wren song prompts the wren roosting atop my heating oil tank to come flying out singing and land in the bracken.
Cold, clear, and still at sunrise, with little sign of the more than two million birds who streamed overhead during the moonlit hours aside from a few soft, scattered chirps.
The slow creak of a field cricket like a rusty winch for the sunrise. In the dying lilac I spot new mile-a-minute vines.
Rain starts at sunrise and tapers off a half hour later. In its wake: phoebe, pewee, goldfinch, Carolina wren. A cedar waxwing’s whistle.
An autumnal sunrise heralded by crickets. I search the bracken patch for any two fronds in the same shade of green, yellow, or brown.
Half a moon alone in the sky. A silent catbird flies into the half-dead lilac. Off through the forest, blinding fragments of the sun.