Slow Waking

A small sip in honor of National Poetry Month.

Dear Slow Sippers:

A fellow writer,

Gina N. Brown

, challenged me to share one of my poems with you in honor of National Poetry Month.

Challenge accepted!

One of my pet peeves is the morning alarm. It is a nasty and inhumane invention. And don’t talk to me about programming my phone to play soothing music. That only makes me crankier.

But many of us have livelihoods that depend on getting to work before a certain hour. Still others have small children at home who wake up, as my niece recently complained, “At the ass crack of dawn.”

One of the benefits of growing older, is that while I still set an alarm on weekday mornings, I usually wake naturally before it goes off.

I wrote this poem in appreciation of one of life’s all too rare luxuries.

Enjoy,

Cathy

Photo by Thomas Kelley

Slow Waking

I let my body guide my waking now. 
 
It reveals a land, soft-edged 
and shrouded, foreign yet familiar. 
A body emerging and immersed,
breaking the olive skin of the water’s surface,
then slipping back under.  
 
Sometimes, in this land,
I am a woodnymph 
dancing under a canopy of leaves. 
I overhear myself whispering, 
in a language I should remember, 
a code I can't quite break. 

Sometimes, I find myself
eyes wide but not seeing. 
Uncertain. Is this waking 
or dying?

I prefer this slow dance in the morning twilight.
To let waking be what it wants to be. 
Let the dawn unfurl its secrets slowly.
Let the day open me.