First light

All these ideas and not one of them very good. I get up while it's still dark and go to the stone room, wrapped in a blanket. I look out toward the east, waiting for the first light, barely perceptible, sometimes it comes only as an awareness of volume, of the depth of sky. It is still and cold. A line of Stafford's comes to me: "In one stride night then takes the hill." Today the morning tiptoes up the same hill like a lover who's been out all night and, coming home, doesn't want to wake you. The lyric is dead. I put a cold washcloth to my head and make a prayer:

"O self-giving love at the center of the universe, protector of idiots and lovers, divine enabler, trickster who allows us to look behind the curtain only to find another curtain, grant us serenity in the face of uncertainty and help us tackle a few soluble problems at a time."

I breathe a fog onto the windowpane. My brain is fogged too -- such a love does not exist independent of my thinking it. The valley is encloaked in fog. There are no miracles except the one, life itself.