Between moonset and dawn, a dark hour filled with the sound of freight trains. I hold my head still to watch Venus slip through the trees.
Venus
January 17, 2024
Five degrees and breezy. The creek still gurgles, low and slow, with Venus through the trees flickering like a candle in the wind.
December 23, 2023
Silhouetted against the dawn sky, a squirrel forages for birch seeds right where Venus was last seen, glimmering through thin clouds.
November 26, 2023
Another still, cold sunrise. I watch Venus creeping through the crown of a black locust, dwindling to a point that finally vanishes behind a flotilla of small clouds.
November 16, 2023
Venus like a searchlight through the bare trees. A great-horned owl calls on the far side of the ridge, but gets no response. He tries again. Silence.
October 9, 2023
An hour before dawn, the crescent moon hangs just above the ridge, with Venus blazing like a campfire through the trees. It’s cold. An inversion layer brings the sound of every engine waking in the valley.
September 14, 2023
Half an hour before sunrise, the goldenrod is already aglow. Venus and Jupiter fade into a cloudless sky. Towhees begin to tweet.
September 12, 2023
The old moon is now mostly ember, clasped by a thin crescent no brighter than nearby Venus. The loud highway noise from the west that portends nice weather.
June 5, 2021
Venus in the dawn sky. Phoebe, field sparrow, wood pewee. The alarm-snorts of a deer.
October 21, 2020
Out at first light. Venus is visible through the thin fog, slowly fading until I lose it in the already-bare branches of a walnut tree.
January 4, 2019
At dawn, that bright smudge in the clouds must be Venus, just above the trees. From the far end of the field, a single hoot: barred owl.
December 20, 2018
Out before dawn, I watch Venus rising through the trees, bright as a searchlight. The distant gargle of jake brakes from the interstate.
December 24, 2010
Before dawn, nothing but wind and trains. In the crown of a birch, Venus burns so fiercely, even the fast-moving clouds can’t extinguish it.
June 18, 2010
A catbird mimics the wood thrush, call-and-response style, getting the phrasing right but little else. Venus fades into the dawn sky.