this morning at 5

The sky was heavy with
the deep morning blue
of diffused fractional daylight.
The damp air glistened with fresh innocence,
the sunflowers asleep under the weight of rainwater,
my garden, all flat shadows and shapes.

I sat in a chair knowing the seat would be wet.
I could hear the workers with their engines
roaring down the highway
on their way to start their version of the day,
but only just.

What tickled my ear, what had me in wonder
was the chant, the trill, the choir
of a hundred - no, thousand! -
birds politely suggesting:

Listen, please! Attention, please!
This is what it means:
this is the good and perfect thing,
this is the pure and lovely,
the excellent and praiseworthy.

This is the peace we are asked to enter into
our hands held gently, beckoning

just sit - in this wet chair, in the gentle rain,
under a gray sky even, and just listen.
This is balm, this is breath.

I think it's the birdsong that makes the sun rise.
This might be anecdotal, but I saw it respond:
like a thousand strings pulling him up and up
(he might have stayed asleep otherwise)
swirling the shadowy shapes with strokes of dawnlight
I could see the individual drips now
I could see my sunflowers dance now
I watched a bird perch on the railing
so alert and fidgety - imagine, at five in the morning!
Just like one of my children.

I never regret wresting myself
into slightly reluctant wakefulness
gathering my books and cups and
tiptoeing from my sleeping  baby
across my creaky wooden floor
in that narrow slip of time
when night meets the morning
to watch the world awaken
and hear the birds start their version of the day.