The morning does not break.
It rises, restless, a thing alive.
It swells, unsettles me with its
erasures of darkness.
Tendrils of light striate blackness,
precocious colors disrupting
night blindness.

But my eyes are not safe from day and
press silk mask and quilt to lashes and lips.
I toss and turn; pieces are misplaced
from endless puzzling dreams.

There is no defense on this earth
where a beam reveals rough edges,
chaos of truth, soured sweetness,
yet every shining thing throbs
in me like impending birth
and behold, the refrain of joy.

I am made for the prismatic
core that fuels life, yet it is
dazzling, strikes chords hard.
So within mysterious slippage
from midnight to dawn
I seek relief, glide and wait.
Before crescendos of light
the web of shadows is erected;
it plans for metamorphosis.

We all want completion, kind illumination,
faces pressed against the scrim,
lives spilling from our palms,
seeking a route for night’s
blending into morning but
without further disturbance,
not one more loss.

The dawn does not break, it escapes
from a well of quietude,
rolls on prodigious waves.
It offers its brilliance.
And then affixes me to this plane,
this spot so I can stand tall, place feet
on floor, walk into a sunlit, fretful world.
Morning is a messenger not refused
and again I must find my way.