The tiny, second-string leaves the lilac put out in September have yellowed, glowing in the fog and drizzle like the bright chirps of sparrows.
white-throated sparrow
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.
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.
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 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.
Red dawn spreading like a wine spill from a small patch of burgundy near the moon, which I watch with head held still to see it inch from twig to twig. A white-throated sparrow is the first to sing.
In the frosty stillness, I watch moonlight disappear into dawnlight. Half an hour before sunrise, an acorn falls with a thud and all the sparrows begin twittering.
Dawn light with sparrow song. The full moon of my insomnia still glows above the western ridge as blood dries on the mousetrap under the stairs.
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.
The solstice dawns cold and overcast, with a small lens of clear sky on the eastern horizon. A thin, wavering song from the meadow: the first white-throated sparrow has woken up.
Sunrise: pink and orange in the sky as on the hillside. A white-breasted nuthatch punctuates a white-throated sparrow’s song.
Clear and cold with a heavy inversion layer: sparrow sounds blend with beeping quarry trucks. In the dim light, all the autumn colors look like blood.
Still no frost. A Carolina wren putt-putts at the woods’ edge. From the powerline, a white-throated sparrow’s plaintive “Oh sweet Canada…”
Fifteen minutes after sunrise, the cloud-lid lifts, and a bright seam appears above the horizon. A white-throated sparrow sings two notes and stops.