Awash with Angels

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Today, in Bellingham, even the sidewalks gleam.
Small change glints from the creases
in the lady’s mantle and the hostas after
the rain that falls, like grace, unmerited.
My pockets are full, spilling over.
~Luci Shaw from “Small Change”

There were thunder storms and torrential rains to the north of us, to the east and to the south, but we had only a gentle constant showering during the night — a calm center.  This morning such undeserved grace is gleaming as if a spill over of twilight’s gloaming.

Today we are awash, cleansed,  with bright wings.

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And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
~ Gerard Manly Hopkins from “God’s Grandeur”


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Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.
~Richard Wilbur

Gloaming Fades to Dawn

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When night is almost done,
And sunrise grows so near
That we can touch the spaces,
It ‘s time to smooth the hair

And get the dimples ready,
And wonder we could care
For that old faded midnight
That frightened but an hour.
~Emily Dickinson

In the moments before dawn
when glow gently tints
the inside of horizon’s eyelids,
the black of midnight
waxes to mere shadow,
the fear forgotten for but a few hours.

Gloaming dusk
fades into gleaming dawn,
its backlit silhouettes stark
as the darkening earth
slowly opens her eyes
to greet a new and glorious morn.

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