By Dawn’s Early Light

The best thing we can think to do is put our prettiest clothes on

and go out into the very early yellow day, and from the get-go

let the morning know we’d never greet it any way but in our finery –

and then decide to which side of the endless sides of dawn to turn

our heads – to take in and to savor what we could of this particular

infinity we’d happened into, fall for every one of its seductions.

But which way should we look? We stopped and stood, our eyes

directed forward, bodies as if poised to walk ahead – knowing

we were taunting and would now be taunted by caressing armies

of the light, each wave and particle intent as beggars to attend

to it, arguing that it deserved our most exuberant attention.

Shadows got into the fight, pressed us with their plights of darkness,

duty, beauty, sorrow. Every argument turned out to be exactly

right – so right, the very word suggested we should turn right.

So we turned right, and we took it in. Like every dawn, yet not like

any dawn, before, we saw the morning give its freshest testament

to silly lessons for whose meanings, maybe, we might idly yearn,

but never really want to learn – for instance (since whatever God is,

It’s eternally awakening ), how God yawns when It awakens –

which, again, ad infinitum, It never isn’t doing. Meanwhile, we’ll be

pursuing what is left – and carry on, maybe choosing to look left

instead of right tomorrow – as the poet said, by dawn’s early light.

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