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.
sunrise
Clear, cold and still. Sunlight refracted in heavy frost glitters in all the colors of the rainbow.
One degree above freezing and very still. The sun’s slow climb through bare branches. The sound of gnawing rodent teeth in three directions.
Clear and cold. The red squirrel makes its usual racket while the gray squirrels leap silently through the treetops. The western ridge turns red.
Up on the ridgetop to watch the sunrise, seven distinct layers of red in the smog over State College, itself hidden by another wooded ridge. A jay wakes up and screams like a Hollywood eagle.
The sun rises an hour earlier, heralded by the usual motley assortment of sparrows, wrens and corvids. The stratosphere breaks out into a rash of clouds.
A screech owl trilling just before sunrise sets the small birds off. The forsythia at the woods’ edge is once again yellow. The clouds turn red.
A cloud that started life as a contrail turns livid as a cut then slowly fades to white before dissolving. A white-throated sparrow repeatedly sings a single, interrogatory note.
Clouds with yellow bellies and a clearing breeze. One oak leaf spirals down stem-first, hits the ground and bounces.
Orange light seeps down the western ridge. The half moon high overhead has been abandoned by its entourage of stars. A crow sits in a newly bare walnut tree, yelling.
Each dawn this time of year brings revelation: the sky behind the ridgetop trees emerging piecemeal like a puzzle. And between the sun and the clouds there’s a new, transitional state: a crowd of yellow.
Cloudy at sunrise except just above the eastern horizon: the western ridge turns red, then slowly fades. Inversion makes the interstate sound much too close.
Clear and still at sunrise, with a slightly harder light frost than yesterday. A crow yelling over the compost. A white-throated sparrow’s thin song.
Fog that lasts for hours, blurring the lines between night and day, and between sky and ground for night-flying migrants now foraging all along the woods’ edge—a cloud full of food.