Sunrise

It's another one of those beautiful sunrises, where the clouds cling just high enough for the sun to glaze their root with peach, gold and orange in the morning breath of light. The edge of blue is made all the sharper by the cotton candy wisps, dark to the west and growing brighter as I slide my glance along the horizon to the eastern glow. I sit; I watch.

I say that I am not a morning person but this is not true. The truth is that I hate to get up in the dark, I dread the climb out of my warm bed, the struggle through my morning ablutions with the glare of artificial light my only illuminator. The darkness makes me dull, morose. My emotions feel lumpy, grumpy and bumpy. I am slow to respond, as if the darkness further weakens me. I am a living dead.

Then I see the sunrise, the morning breaking in glorious shades, creeping over the skyline and slowly sliding up into day. I see the blush of colour, first weak against the darkling sky then stronger as the sun pushes back the beast of blackened night. The blue leaks in, staining black to gray then blotting it away altogether. Morning clouds glide by, proving the moving power of the air and all of God's creation.

As the day creeps out from the clutches of night, I gather power. As the sky moves from a stone to a feather, the weight of my existence eases. As the clouds move from west to east, they move me. As light invades the darkness, my mood is lightened. So perhaps I am a morning person. Perhaps it is the night that is my real problem.

I am reminded of a line from "In Flanders Field" by John Macrea; "These are the dead. Short days ago they lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow." The sadness in this poem, the loss is so powerful. Short days. They saw sunset. This moving poem acts as a mirror for me, a reflection opposite to my view. Getting up in the morning to see the morning light is an act of wonder, raising from the dead of sleep to the light of day. The sun is a resurrection.

I am alive. Living. Seeing sunrise glow.