Awake the mind’s hopeless so
At a quarter to six I rise
And run 2 or 3 miles in
The pristine air of a dark
And windy winter morning
With a light rain falling
And no sound but the pad
Of my sneakers on the asphalt
And the calls of the owls in
The cypress trees on Mesa Road

And when I get back you’re
Still asleep under the warm covers
Because love is here to stay
It’s another day and we’re both still alive
~Tom Clark – “Every Day” from Light & Shade: New and Selected Poems.

How joyful to be together, alone
as when we first were joined
in our little house by the river
long ago, except that now we know

each other, as we did not then;
and now instead of two stories fumbling
to meet, we belong to one story
that the two, joining, made. And now

we touch each other with the tenderness
of mortals, who know themselves:
how joyful to feel the heart quake

at the sight of a grandmother,
old friend in the morning light,
beautiful in her blue robe!
~Wendell Berry “The Blue Robe” from  New Collected Poem

These winter mornings –
waking early to part
from your warm side,
leaving behind my soft imprint,
I wrap up in my robe
to walk the gravel drive
to deliver a letter to our mailbox.

Our hilltop farm
lies silent amid fallow fields,
moon shadows
broad across my path
star sparks overhead
with orange paint beginning to lick
awake the eastern mountain peaks.

I walk noiselessly;
step out on the road
then turn ~ startled
as a flashlight approaches.

A walker and her dog
illuminate me in my dawn disarray
like a deer in headlights:
my ruffled hair, my sleep-lined face.
It is a grandma-caught-in-her-bathrobe
surprise at sunrise and
I’m simply glad to be alive.

A book of beauty in words and photos, available for order here: