Watching the pre-dawn sky

At 4:30 there's the faintest of pink glows over the islands to the east. The moon is well risen, in its waning crescent phase, and the sky is longer black, but the deepest and darkest blue. Gradually, the east grows brighter, and the stars fade, and the color of the sky lightens, and just before the sun breaks over the crust of the earth at 5:30, the sky is slightly blue, slightly gray. Then the sun, red and yellow, burns through the firs on Sheep Island, and the sky once again becomes the color of the sea, the one cloudless and warm, the other wrinkled and cool, perfect complements to an August morning in Maine.