Dawn

I saw a picture postcard showing Glastonbury at dawn, and I wanted to be there. Actually, I'd settle for being anyplace at dawn, to watch the rosy fingers of Aurora, daughter of the dawn, spreading over the entire sky, tinting the valley peachy-pink, misting the whole scene in apricot.

 

If we all lived in a place where we could see such a dawn every morning, would we be better for it? Or would we not even bother to get up to see it? Would it become old hat, stale, such an accustomed view that we wouldn't make the effort?

 

I want to see the dawn. Not the puny, smog-enhanced sunrise, muffled by an overcast sky, that I see now. Not the sun coming up somewhere behind that condo standing between me and the eastern horizon. I want to see dawn whole. I want to see the light begin to spread, from the faintest lightening of the darkness (because in this treasured spot that I am imagining there will be darkness, not the glow of mercury vapor streetlights that keep the dark away). I want to see the dawn spread slowly—and yet happen so quickly that if you look away you miss the crucial moment.

 

For they are all crucial moments, those moments of watching, watching for, the dawn, and I'm sick of missing them. When I come to account for my time on earth, how feeble it will sound to have to say, "Well, I must admit it was never really convenient for me to take in the birth of the sun as seen from planet Earth. I'd like to have seen it every day, of course, but it just didn't fit my lifestyle."

 

Copyright 2008 Ann Tudor   

www.anntudor.ca
http://scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com