"Before the Summer Morning"

A summer sunrise in the south is a sacred happening - the sounds, sights and smells of dew covered greenery, birds awaking, and the sun slow to lift from the eastern fields.

I lay with my lover in a predawn
Sundrop awaiting the alarm
that will end this embrace
for the moment, alone
   with our thoughts

Of each other
fresh in the wrinkling sheets
and folds of our minds
where all the time in the world
seems safe in this rosy sunrise bubble
      with us

There is no rush until
the radio awakes
except this morning by some chance
it is the CD player
instead of important news intruding
from the public station sleepy still
   but now sings

The cedar flute of a friend
and a meditation born in the red rock canyons
the home of those who have been longer
brought here to this wet green spring sauna haven
a softer echo than stone

Slipped-through-the-dust-crack spider
and smaller-than-screenmesh wingsmith
linger
because this is an old house
and here love and weddings
and death and mourning happen
occasionally
over decades
but each spring
the insects do their thing
   same as it ever was

Take up and carry on and mate
   and feed
   and hunt
   and hunger
intense as summer rain
in the brief shimmer moment of their
   existence

Until they are found by the broom
or vacuumed into ether-mist bags
in a time-honored ritual
where naught but the tools
      change

In the laughing dawn of bittersweet
a single tear of temporary parting
but there is no mourning today
and no broom to sweep us
      away

 

 


Copyright © Andrew McKnight. All Rights Reserved.

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