Hey tweets, this morning before dawn, my husband and I went out to watch the space station go by. NASA posts the times of passage on its website, along with directions about where in the sky to look. You can see it when the dawn lights the eastern lands beyond our view but has not yet limned the horizon. This morning the space station passed right through the Big Dipper, like a tiny UFO on its way to an alien destination. Its color was exactly the hue of a jack o'lantern when lit by one candle. In the dark, the birds sang their dawn chorus without heed to this manmade wonder fleeing overhead. What a planet we live on, and what a species we are.

Once the sun came up, I walked around the celestially beautiful Fill, listening to the Yellow Warblers singing from behind the leaves, watching two hummingbirds argue about who gets to drink from the flower, though many flowers offered drinks. On Main Pond, the ducks were already snoozing, having preened and dined already. The Mallards are losing their emerald feathers; the Gadwalls still have mating in mind; the Cinnamon Teal just glows by himself. Off in the distance I could hear two Green Herons squawking about feeding the kids. How hard it was to leave!

Here is a poem for you today:

Before dawn,
when the still air whispers dark?
that time belongs to the birds,
and me.
Stargazers, all,
we watch the moon sink down.

- Connie, Seattle

csidles at constancypress.com
constancesidles at gmail.com