Morning

When the day’s first light
Shines down the hall
And the smell of coffee
Dances into the room,
My mind gently stirs
Beneath the weight of the morning.
I rise and,
With robe holding in the night’s warmth
Shuffle toward the sounds in the kitchen
Where I know you’ll be.
You always are.

Before there was you,
Morning came rudely…
Little more than a beginning of
Just another day.
The memory of its incivility
Is now thankfully filtered by
Time and distance.

When you came,
Morning seemed to take on
A new meaning.
No longer a blurry inconvenience
But the start of another chapter
In a book with no ending.

And yet…

That was the smell of coffee
Wasn’t it?
I could have sworn…
Yet as I draw closer
The aroma seems to fade.
And the light from the hallway
Now appears to be
Little more than a dusky illusion.
The sounds of the morning
And your stirring
Now fading into a
Most profound quiet.
The night rushing back
To fill the empty space.

A mental mirage, all of it.
Perhaps a self-deceptive facade
conjured by the part of the mind
which fears the stillness
Of solitude.

How long have you
Been gone now?
It seems like yesterday,
And yet
Like a million years.

I thought you’d still be here...
You always were.



This poem stumbled out of my head a few days ago, inspired by current personal events... but in a moment of epiphany I realized it could have been channeled from the ghost of my Grandmother. I'm certain the words appropriately represent the way she felt after Grandpa's death, they were definitely morning people.


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