At Dawn

 It's such a busy season! Not enough hours in the day! So rather than writing something new here, I'm going to paste a poem I wrote before I moved to Iowa City. I was living on the family farm, growing medicinal herbs for the farmers market, and enjoying country life. I remember the morning I wrote this poem, and reading it again brings all those memories back.

At Dawn

Pulled from bed by the sound of waving treetops,

I make my way down the long staircase,

across the study, and out into the dawn,

moving from stillness to an outside world electric with movement.

I sit on the top step of the south porch,

letting the cool moist air wash over me.

A regiment of clouds approaches from the west,

full of the promise of something significant,

a mixture of blacks and grays, 

morphing into rounded shapes,

and then stretching thin and long 

as the wind carries them on.

Wrapped in the stillness of an observer,

I watch small birds soar high above the trees and then swoop down,

moved to ecstatic flight by the same tingling expectancy that I feel:

Storm is coming.

And then it is here,

a roar of wind, trees bending impossibly low,

the first drops of rain coming fast on a diagonal,

slapping hard against my face.

Still sitting on the porch step,

but no longer an observer,

I am pulled from quiet separateness into a wild wholeness.

I smile large with the joy of it,

filled with gratitude for this day’s beginning.