For a bright and promising summer solstice morning:
Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,
then night with his notorious perfumes,
his many-pointed stars?
…and if necessary, the windows—
trees fifty, a hundred years old
out there,
heavy clouds on the way
and the lawn steaming like a horse
in the early morning.
~Billy Collins from “Morning”
In the field sloping down,
Park-like, to where its willows showed the brook,
Haymakers rested…
All days are sacred days to wake
New gladness in the sunny air.
Only a night from old to new;
Only a sleep from night to morn.
The new is but the old come true;
Each sunrise sees a new year born.
~Helen Hunt Jackson from “New Year’s Morning”
We awake glad,
breathe deeply of the sacred around us
glistening in the light of a soft sunrise.
Each day is a fresh start,
a gift from beyond,
content to renew covenant
with God and one another.
It is in the early morning hour that the unseen is seen,
and that the far-off beauty and glory,
vanquishing all their vagueness,
move down upon us till they stand
clear as crystal close over against the soul.
~Sarah Smiley
Slow buds the pink dawn like a rose
From out night’s gray and cloudy sheath;
Softly and still it grows and grows,
Petal by petal, leaf by leaf.
~Susan Coolidge
For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?
~Thornton Wilder
In trees still dripping night some nameless birds
Woke, shook out their arrowy wings, and sang,
Slowly, like finches sifting through a dream.
The pink sun fell, like glass, into the fields.
Two chestnuts, and a dapple gray,
Their shoulders wet with light, their dark hair streaming,
Climbed the hill. The last mist fell away.
And under the trees, beyond time’s brittle drift,
I stood like Adam in his lonely garden
On that first morning, shaken out of sleep,
Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves,
Like tissue on some vast, incredible gift.
~ Mary Oliver – from “Morning In a New Land”
“Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves. Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure, but clean enough for another day’s chalking.”
~Frederich Buechner
And tomorrow
move forward
to leave a mark on a new day
after night’s erasing rest.
No matter what took place the day before,
no matter the misgivings,
no matter what should have been left unsaid,
no matter how hard the heart,
there is another day to make it right.
Forgiveness finds a foothold in the dark,
when eyelids close,
thoughts quietly open,
voices hush in prayers
of praise, petition and gratitude.
And so now
sleep on it
knowing his grace
abounds in blameless dreams.
Morning will come
awash in new light,
another chance
freely given.
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.
And that is just the point… how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That’s the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. “Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?”
~Mary Oliver
Some mornings it is impossible to stay a silent observer of the world. It demands a response.
The overnight wind and rain have pulled down nearly every leaf, the ground is carpeted with the dying evidence of last spring’s rebirth, the dropping temperatures robing the surrounding foothills and peaks in a bright new snow covering.
There can be no complacency in witnessing this startling transition in progress. It blusters, rips, drenches, encompasses, buries. Nothing remains as it was.
And here I am, alive.
Awed.
Responding.
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Overcome us that, so overcome, we may be ourselves: we desire the beginning of your reign as we desire dawn and dew, wetness at the birth of light. – C.S. Lewis
My husband and I have just spent our first night in Japan, traveling to share some precious time with our son who teaches in Tokyo, and staying with our close friends of thirty years who are serving as missionaries here. With our internal clocks off, we woke at 2 AM, so over the last hour, I have watched Tokyo awake cold, gray and overcast, much like dawns at home in the Pacific Northwest Although there was not the visible ‘rising sun’ this ancient land is known for, a birth of light still happened just as it does anywhere on earth to erase the night, even above and despite the cloud cover.
I am overwhelmed by the vastness of the ocean we flew over yesterday, the hugeness of this city and its multimillions of people, by the fact we are able to be here at all in mere hours in this modern age of transportation. I am overcome that I can witness the dawn no matter where I rise, insignificant as I am, that I am able to feel at home even in far off lands.
May I be confident, no matter where I sleep or awake, I can be witness to a dawning, inevitable, that rises over a vast Kingdom without borders, without corruption, without alienation, without end.
No matter where I lie, I will be covered in its cleansing dew.
<a
Barnstorming 
