Sunrise somewhere between showers, cold and sodden, the sky flat-white like the eye of a dead fish. No flies for the flycatchers, no sun for the wren.
sunrise
A patchwork sky at sunrise with a bitter wind. The daffodils’ cups are all overturned. A few lost snowflakes straggle past.
A damp and gloomy sunrise. Juncos twitter in the tops of black birches. A cowbird’s liquid note.
Sunrise from under a lid of cloud turning the ridge orange. The robin sings a few bars. A propellor plane fades into the distance.
Five degrees below freezing and half-cloudy at dawn, clearing off by sunrise. The robin is missing in action, offering no competition for the caroling of a Carolina wren.
A few degrees above freezing at sunrise. A titmouse’s monotonous song. The clouds turn orange and drift off like boats into the blue.
Cool and clear. At sunrise a red squirrel appears on the end of my porch instead of the usual gray squirrel, spots me, and moves over to the stone wall where chipmunks always sit, nervously peering all about.
A degree or two below freezing at dawn. The flat-tire moon fades into obscurity in the middle of a cloudless sky. The ridge turns red.
Red not where the sun rises but where the clouds are thin, off to the north. A silent crow takes a seat in the treetops. The thump of a squirrel falling to the forest floor.
Overcast at sunrise, the clouds begin to show cracks of blue. A song sparrow continues with his hip-hip-hurrahing long after the others have gone off to forage.
Half an inch of wet snow has turned things white again, if not for long: the wind blows clumps of snow from the trees. The sun comes up.
Windy, cold and clear at dawn. A song sparrow pipes up from the depths of the lilac. The ridge turns red.
A sky of pastel colors occasionally graced by a bleary sun. Strings of non-migrant, local Canada geese fly low over the trees, restless, their cries still full of elsewhere.
The sun! A robin answers the Carolina wren as a pileated woodpecker hammers away at a hollow black walnut tree.