Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Reluctant Aubade

I only see the dawn
if I’ve stayed up all night 
the night before.
Or sometimes I’m forced to greet the new day,
but I can assure you, I haven’t rested well,
my thoughts racing,
What if I oversleep,
sleep right through my alarm,
and I miss my flight, my surgery,
the mandatory meeting?
And I wake up multiple times in the darkness
with a hammering heart
and see that it is still too early to rise.
I make a note of the sunrises I see
because I feel at the end for me it won’t be that many.
Thousands upon thousands of sunsets I have admired.
Sunrises…I don’t know, maybe 15?

The dawn to me is a pink and purple sky in the east,
shoved offstage by a blinding yellow star,
Dear God, that’s bright.
Slow morning traffic on the highway,
the relentless beams sliding just underneath my visor,
I sip my scalding tea,
listen to the morning radio chatter,
and inch forward
toward some kind of delay,
road construction or an accident,
and it makes you wonder if you’ll be late,
even though you got up so goddamn early.
And you think,
there are people who thrive at this time,
who are awake and alert and most themselves at this time,
and what would that be like?
I would be a whole different person.
Probably not a better person, but completely different.
Much better to greet the dawn from your bed, I think.
A gleaming ray of light sneaking behind your curtains.
You lift up your head, scowl and groan,
flip to your side and close your eyes again,
and as you breathe slowly, you sink back 
into the incomprehensible scene of your dreams.

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