Working Morning

As Autumn and Winter progress, it grows more and more difficult to get up each morning. Hot showers help, when there is time, but even that shivered dash from the bedroom to the bathroom can be a sufficient impediment to activity. We should count ourselves lucky that Oregon is so temperate when compared to the Northeast, but suffering is subjective and, from November till April, Summer can seem an all-too-forlorn hope.


Working Morning

A brisk wind blows
and blights the trees
above an icy sheen.
It burns the nose
and bends the knees
and wipes the gutters clean,

as weary folk
with heavy eyes
would rather stay asleep,
when each awoke
to inky skies,
so hesitant to peek

from underneath
a cozy hoard
of blankets rallied round,
a heavy wreath
of leisure stored
within a woolen mound.

But constant calls
of duty rouse
the lifeless to a hint
of drafty halls;
each dusky house
grows vital with a glint

of lambent light
and covers drawn
and coffee in the cup,
and so the night
is quit for dawn
and labor, rising up.