Sunrise

Sunrise

written by: Eric A. Lohman

@ealcsw

 

It’s five a.m. and I’m up to keep my yearly tradition
of at least once greeting the dawn.

What woke me at three-thirty
doesn’t matter anymore

as I’m out here on the deck and ready
to view this nuclear explosion in reverse.

My reason for describing it so will become clear
as soon as you begin to observe

things glowing in the dark.

The first of these, I am stunned to notice,
is an ominous red hook

someone left hanging in the east sou’east,
a quarter east of the sky;

not to say forgetful but a body could be hurt
on such a sharp thing left hanging,

especially in the heart.

It’s dull bloodblister redness, like a fruit
about to pop, takes charge to orange

as it is blasted by Wednesday and flashes
of white sheet lightning

echo it in the distance behind me.

I had to say all this because my camera,
a poor imitation of my God-given lens

lacks the sensitivity to capture the
delicate sheen on the water, cast down

by this edge of citrus, now becoming lemon,
a poet’s low hanging fruit for sure.

So, it’s easy to be sucked in, suckered
by the moon and lose one’s focus

on the reason one is here.

The glow is just beginning to prick
up the tent flaps of night,

the milky way, its billion holes folded
away and stuffed under a counterpaine

of cloudbank, rolling in over shockwaves
kissing the shore. Shockwaves?, you say,

indeed the gentle tug and release
by the night’s action on the waters

is just as much a part of the explosion –
it’s only the gentleness of giants.

Risen higher, now in ivory, the moon
is still the only object in the sky that points to dawn.

The blood red bursting fruit of five a.m.
now is spattered on the distant shroud

of haze, not even any boats breaking
the line of the horizon with their mysterious

life that lights the night-sea just off shore,
and makes me want to join them, nights,

for a while, just to see what it’s like.

The glow’s tint richer now, a horsehead
thunderpeak rears itself and whinnies

before losing itself at the withers
to become a gull, and there are the birds

who, scurrying like shore squirrels,
gather their buried periwinkle nuts.

The dawn still hasn’t broken yet and
though I’m beginning to lose patience,

I’m marveling and how long it held my gaze.
This age of short attention spans,

though shameful, still gives praise
to what’s truly valuable in life –

that even such as I, raised on TV, my brain
a mush of solely sitcom-triggered circuits

could be held spellbound at the beach, long enough to sit and write for you the news

that pelicans still cruise
a hairsbredth above the drink,

that crabs still scamper
from their holes to the sea,

that this morning Mannheim steamroller –
the crescendo, not the holiday muzak band-

building like a gasp with every morning,
like to set the world on fire (it is!)

is still well worth the loss of a good night’s sleep.