The Place Called Morning

Some mornings

I wake up thinking about Dickinson

And how she hardly traveled anywhere

Yet somehow arrived before everyone else.

The kettle hums softly in the kitchen,

A tiny invisible orchestra,

And the window is still deciding

Whether the world should become blue or gold.

Will there really be a morning?

Not the scientific kind —

Not sunrise measured by clocks or satellites —

But the kind you almost hear breathing

Before the birds remember their names.

I used to think

Morning lived somewhere very far away.

Beyond harbors.

Beyond snowy mountains.

Beyond the countries printed in atlases

Beside tiny airplanes and impossible oceans.

But maybe it lives quietly

Inside ordinary rooms.

Inside steam above a cup of tea.

Inside socks warming near the heater.

Inside the sound of someone downstairs

Opening a bakery before dawn.

Dickinson knew this, I think.

She stayed close to home

Yet touched so many distances

Simply by noticing light

Moving across a wall.

Sometimes I imagine

The first child who ever saw rain.

How astonished they must have been.

How sacred a puddle looked

Before language arrived

To explain it away.

Oh sailor,

Oh scholar,

Oh sleepy little planet turning softly in the dark —

Tell me again where morning hides

Before the city fully wakes.

Because every day

I almost forget.

And every day

The sky forgives me gently.

Outside,

The trees stand quietly in their green pajamas,

Clouds drifting like unfinished thoughts,

And somewhere a train passes slowly enough

To sound like memory.

I think happiness may simply be this:

To wake up curious.

To leave a little silence untouched.

To let the light arrive

Without asking anything from it.

Will there really be a morning?

The question feels beautiful

Even now.