The morning

(in response to The Morning is Full by Pablo Neruda)

Sometimes, in fact most of the time, I refer to the night as being like a storm. My body flushing out my sickness as best it can, the aches & pains looking for a safe mooring, a still point. My mornings are always jagged & blurred as I search for the perch in the conductor's nest from which to orchestrate the day ahead. I can detect the melodies in the air but too often they are carried away on the wind. But who's counting? In fact, what is it to be numberless? To stop counting the days, the hours, the mornings for the want of a life of just being.

And the sound of the birds outside my window bring air to my thoughts & a flutter to my heart.

I can see & hear the life in the garden even though I can't get into it. But, the other day I met a man & discovered it's his garden after all. And you never know how these things will turn out...

Who knew the morning would feel like this? & what happens when you feel like you've written enough for one morning?

Morning. Beginning of the day. Beginning of time. Beginning.

A city apartment on the 5th floor. A cooker on the balcony, shielded by glass. An outdoor kitchen. A courtyard far away below, sunless. The bottom of a well surrounded by buildings. The beginning of life.

A ground floor apartment in a seaside town, with a garden wrapped around three sides of a square building block, where we ran, buried pets, played, cried, hid, escaped, grew up. The beginning of the end.

A one-way ticket to another country. A flea infested bed in a house filled with lost souls. A lump in the throat. The beginning of a new life. My life.

Morning after morning, every day a new beginning until morning is just a morning, the beginning of a new day as the person that I am, the patched up version of me, who looks forward to a commute down the end of the garden with a cup of coffee in one hand and a key in the other. Open the door, switch on the music, shut out the sound of the street waking up.

The patched up version of me who walks down the seafront, shoeless feet in freezing water, ignoring the pebbles digging into the soles of my feet. I will not concentrate on pain when there's so much to be thankful for.

The morning light, a morning stretch, and you, all three of you, my stable port, your arms around my shoulders, my hands in your hands, your hand in mine. The lives that I have created and the life that supports my heart. Without this, a morning would be a dark night, another excuse to stay in bed, longer, forever, motionless, weak, powerless.

But the sun is out. Get out there. Be thankful for second chances.