The Morning of the Morning

The Morning of the Morning


Why let it matter so much?:
the morning’s morningness,
early dark modulating into light
and the tall thin spruces jabbing
their black outlines at dawn,
light touching the slope’s outcroppings
of rock and yellow grass,
as I sit curled under blankets in the world
after the world Descartes shattered,
a monstrous fracture
like the creek’s water surging through broken ice.

A silent wind bounces spruce branches
in that motion that sets molecules vibrating
latitude by latitude
to crack the absolute
of feeling, of knowing what I know,
of knowing who I am,
while down the road the town wakes to hammer and saw—
a sound that says to some,
if you don’t grow you’re dead—
and then farther down the elk and deer gather
at a farmer’s fence for his handout of hay.

Late January: just outside
Rocky Mountain National Park:
a high branch of ponderosa offers a rosette
of needles blackgreen and splayed
as in a Japanese scroll painting,
which is beautiful if I focus there
and not on the sprawl I’m part of
in this rented condo where I don’t want to live
since I, too, need more rooms to haul my coffee to,
more bookshelves for books
I haven’t time to read—bird chatter!—
I shouldn’t make one more resolution
I can’t keep to spend more time with friends.

But it’s morning and morning’s my time of day
as spring’s my season; more light, I say.
I do regret some things I’ve done and if I could,
I’d do things differently: start sooner,
say, look deeper.
One flake of snow drifts down slantwise,
a lovely interruption to my tirade—
as each aspen is to the larger groves of taller firs—
and brings me back to what’s happening here.

Copyright © Mary Crow
first published in Ploughshares
Emerson College, 2001
Posted over on Mary Crow's Blog