Poetry and Writes

Dawn (POEM)

Sometimes I get up early, as

The dawn begins to wake

As the sky lingers on changing,

A hinge between a life.

I slip out the door, my feet bare

In the dew. I wander towards

The forest's doors to see a world renewed.

I touch the feathered bark of the pines

The smooth skin of the madrones

I feel the earth shifting in indecision

As the wind cries and carves its lines

I feel the churn of dirt under my heels

And my hair growing heavy with bayside mist.

In the still light, I stand upon the cliff's edge

Among the quivering trees, the ground

Unstable beneath us, the Sound gaping across,

Seagulls wheeling over sparkling surf, and

I wonder what it would be like to

Be a part of this—to be a wren, to be a hare—

Always searching, always finding, never

Collapsed under human thought—

Peering from ancient leaves, sleeping

Among twisted roots, seeing the morning

Sifting soft through the canopy's sheathes.

But sometimes I do not awaken in the

Deepened dawn, before the sun casts

Its light over green manicured lawns.

Sometimes I do not awaken before

The frivolous day begins—sometimes

I stay as a paralyzed form in bed,

Because it's too hard to face

That turning forest, to see its foliage fall,

To know its life is ephemeral

And that this white purposeless day

Will overtake the wizened dawn and

Eventually envelop all.