morning – Page 3 – radical druid

The First Day

Published on November 30, 2006

If this is the first day of what life remains,
who cares if there’s sunshine or thunder and rain?
Both have their own virtues, each pleasure and pain;
though different, a good deal the same.

If this is the first day of what there is left,
what good is my grieving, or acting bereft
because things so far haven’t all gone my way?
What matters is always today.

Yesterday’s always a moment behind,
tomorrow a moment too soon;
hold on too tightly, and you’ll only find
January turns into June.
Each brand new morning is unto itself,
it needs not a calendar name.
Waste just one moment, and your life is past
with no one but yourself to blame.

If this is the worst day to happen so far,
what good is me blaming some unlucky stars
or looking for answers where none need be found
beyond my two feet on the ground?

If this is the best day that will ever be,
what good is it to keep it locked up for me
when part of the reason it turned out that way
is saving tomorrow for after today?

If this is the first day, and what’s come before
is just one more wave on an infinite shore,
which part of creation should I try to blame?
The end and beginning are one and the same.

30 NOV 2006

for James Taylor

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No Surprise This Morning: an alba or aubade

Published on August 4, 2006

That morning comes again is no surprise;
the laws of physics have not been withheld,
nor has the motion of the planets, if
those laws are merely whims, been held at bay.
No vengeful demons or vain deities
have paused the world in darkness for their play.

No, the edge of space where I sit has again
been turned and tilted to its burning star;
while elsewhere on the globe, lights flicker out
and someone borrows my fear of the night
(which is not trepidation of mere dark,
but rather, the unknown outside the cave
[or box, as we prefer to call it now,
since we are civilized a thousand-fold]
that waits for us, like some divine pop quiz
on that damned chapter we forgot to read).

So, morning comes again; and every time,
despite all evidence to prove it will,
and though our own experience and sense
would tend to ease our worry on this tack,
yet we stand dumb still, starstruck at the sight,
in shock that our blind faith
caused it to be.

04 AUG 2006

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This Morning’s Song

Published on April 11, 2006

The song I sing this morning is not new.
In fact, its birth predates even my own;
yet in between the phrases, now and then,
it’s me, and not the tune, that you’ll hear groan.

Why is this melody upon my lips
instead of some fresh fragment from the charts,
designed from sentimental, worn cliches
to motivate me and my shopping cart?

Because it has survived, the same as I,
despite the efforts of a younger set
who think of history as just passe,
and find their greatest talent, to forget.

The song I sing this morning, I once sang
as a young boy who’d just begun to dream
that this old world was more than it appeared,
and started peeking in between the seams.

What song will you be singing when we meet?
I hope it’s one where I can sing along;
I’ll share mine with you, if you’d care to try:
in harmony, it’s twice as loud and strong.

11 APR 2006

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A Different Sunrise: an alba

Published on October 14, 2005

What light may break through the scrub trees
that line the well-groomed yard at dawn
is thin and pale, its weight degrees
less than it when it lingers on

the lower depths, the southern end,
below the Orleans waterline;
there it hangs and drips with fat
and heavy water in the pines

and live oaks. Yet it brings the day
on the same time clock. Newton claimed
that mass does not affect the way
a thing responds; its strength is tamed

by gravity, that evens out
the superficial and the deep.
I, though, with Einstein, have my doubts,
while watching as new sunsets creep,

some like a lion, others meek,
with peacock’s plumes, or subtle shades;
some like a corpse, that dares not speak;
a few like boisterous parades.

What insights in an hour’s time
the rare observer gains, are lost
once that same sun completes its climb
and burns away both death, and frost.

14 OCT 2005

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Whence the morning comes

Published on May 23, 2005

All brave words pale to whimpered, mewling sighs;
great structures crumble to their timber’s dust;
aged soldiers’ shouts turn into babies’ cries,
their heroism’s bread gnawed to the crust.
Proud governments dissemble into gangs;
philosophers’ grand speeches become babbles;
elaborate costumes rot where they hang;
the wise assembly reverts to mere rabble.

And what event precipitates this fall,
what monumental shift in time and space
wreaks havoc on the known, destroying all
to leave in Beauty’s stead a gruesome face —
some wild disruption in the cosmic scheming
that causes misalignment of the spheres?
a moment where the gods cease from their dreaming
and we are left alone when the mist clears?

What then? If our own actions make the future,
with no unseen, omnipotent control,
no divine surgeon to tie off the sutures
and seal the wounds we’ve rendered on the whole;
if we alone, frail humankind, have wandered
so far beyond our role, through pride and greed,
that any promise due us we have squandered
and have no promised land, no guarantee?

What good religions, if they do not teach us
to doubt our own ability to reign
or don’t allow the universe to reach us,
instead instructing to ignore our pain?
All brave words are for naught, if in our bravery
we fail to speak for those whose tongues are dumb;
should our great light cast the whole world in shadow,
what good is knowing whence the morning comes?

23 May 2005

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Early Morning

Published on December 29, 2004

There is something liberating about
waking up early. Not too
early, mind you. But earlier
than you need to be
awake; and if you’re lucky,
early enough to see the
last of the night disappear
in the whitewash of the
morning sun, and to hear
the birds when they first
rise and start practicing their
songs, like violinists warming up
outside the concert hall for
a performance later that afternoon.

It’s a sense of freedom,
definitely — and an opportunity to
feel the earth’s slow glow
as it stretches its muscles
and wipes the traces of
sleep from its opening eyes.

29 DEC 2004

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At Dawn When I Awoke

Published on December 7, 2004

At dawn, when I awoke, the rain
was but a mist that damped the lawn;
and then its whitewash strength increased
to rinse the night, ’til it was gone.

Its purpose served, it too then waned,
as greys began to blue
and dried the puddles left behind
to just a drop or two.

Yet on the breeze I taste it still —
its cool and fragrant kiss,
that lingers in the morning air;
good days begin like this.

The wrens, at first asleep, or shy,
now venture from their shade
and low, take up their favorite tune
and start to promenade.

07 DEC 2004

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Tag: morning

The First Day

No Surprise This Morning: an alba or aubade

This Morning’s Song

A Different Sunrise: an alba

Whence the morning comes

Early Morning

At Dawn When I Awoke