Mornings.

Devotional poems,,, what does this mean? It keeps running through my head, devotional, marks of prayer, marks of offering. I think of such small sweet actions that can hardly be named-- a slight tilt of the head and pause, a raising of the hot cup of tea just up, just so, steam in the early morning light, smoke smudged across a shaft of morning light.

Here it is trains, and small birds that fit themselves into the squares in the fence, chirping. It is pumpkin pieces in the grass and squirrels, it is the dull rattle of hundreds of seed pods overhead. The umbrella tree overhead is haunted with friendly ghosts. The birds pay their respects daily, swooping in in giant curlicues and back out, in a whoosh. It is blue sky and no shadow.

Mornings are the best, the air feels fresh, scrubbed, 'newly minted'. There is enough space to insulate-- enough quiet space buffer to wrap around the windows I look out of-- second skin, second eyes. The birdsong creates this field, this buffer, and the breeze. The light that falls down from the top of windows is blue, and clear, and tinged with winter cold. It is stretched, and only blue at the edges.

I am trying to capture something, what?? When we make small bows to the morning, to the early parts of day, what are we doing? When we listen and separate each part from the other, pull studs out of the fabric, are we marking time? I think we are stopping time, for a moment. After so much heartache yesterday-- how to reconnect with my own power? How to regain, recapture a heart connection with the world? For me it starts with small steps today, small acts of devotion, small stops, small beats: blue like polished bronze in the light, blue with metallics just under the surface, blue washed over the soaped fabric of morning, trains, trains, round notes of birds like tiny metal gongs, shadows becoming sharper on the wall,, vines, grapes shrunken to the vine, breeze.  There is a distant hum of traffic, but here, here, here.... is touching my head to the ground.