Morning Reverie

Morning Reverie

(“Light rises even in darkness for the one who is right. He is kind and has loving-pity and does what is right.” Psalm 112:4)

It was a calico morning when the
sun,
banana yellow,
squeaked through the window treatments
in the old cabin on the hill.
A feral cat or two
hunted and pounced while
the coffee brewed in the aluminum urn
on the stove.
The gingham was replaced with forest
green
curtains,
the floorboards creaked like the elder’s
bones as he got out of bed.
There were memories in every crevice of
the oily paneling, there were creations that
refused to be put aside. Chili was cooked in
an iron pot
suspended over the eternal flame in the
corner fireplace. The poker rested on the
stonework mantle, the bellows exhausted from
last night’s work.

The doves were waiting for the graying clouds
to arrive and
huddled in a branch of the
pear tree
that snuck up under the eaves.

The children were gone for years now,
the generations were finding their way home.
But he poured a cup of the black elixir
and laughed

As the doves seemed to kiss midflight, then
rose with the breeze and landed,
wing-in-wing,
a breath-long distance from his morning reverie.