Both Night owl and Morning Lover
I met myself at night.
Stayed outside until the moonlight
swirled across the treetops
until the mockingbird sang its last love call
from the branches of a backyard oak,
until all neighborhood noise ceased
the only sound left was a heart
It was at night I wandered through closets
playing dress-up of who I should be
lighting candles to psychedelic album covers
memorizing songs of revolutionary rock lyrics
pretending to be the curly hair celestial singer
on a gilded looking-glass stage
Nighttime opened all the book covers
opened up visions of someone else’s life
led me down interstellar blocks of time
to march along side the troubadours
who practiced living for real
It was a lover who roused my swollen eyelids
a single player who beckoned me awake
who showed me how mornings arrive
in an unraveling blanket of misty sunlight
caught in the robin’s beak,
who knew the code of gathering stamina
before a world that swallows us whole
Dawn delivered me to myself
in that first blush of radiant sun
I could still grasp the wondrous night
in the spaces of that fading dream
by placing my fingertips to the paper
in a daylight rapture of pen to page
pattyv
Wow, Patty! I had to read this several times before I could begin to form a coherent comment about the lyrical, fantastic images you conjure for us. The use of the mockingbird at night and robin in the morning were apt images to express those different times of day. (I was brought back to the bedroom scene in “Romeo and Juliet” – “It was the nightingale, not the lark, That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear. Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree. Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.” But we know it is not; the dawn and separation looms for the doomed lovers.)
“Dawn delivered me to myself…by placing my fingertips to paper/in a daylight rapture of pen to page.
Dawn has given you a gift and we are the recipients, evermore grateful. Thank you.
Thanx again Patty for all the wonderful images in your poem and the Rumi quote.
Your opening line spoke to me. We meet others in a world that swallows us whole, a world that Wordsworth says is too much with us. But how often do we meet ourselves?
So many memories were conjured up by this poem, Patty! Nights as a kid when I lay awake, trying various imaginative fantasies on in my head, hoping that one would lead me to sleep. Glancing at the sky through my blinds, dreading that the black sky would begin to show itself a deep blue. Even before that, the waking sounds of the mourning doves in the tree outside the window, a soft trilling in the darkness, followed by their plaintive cooing as the night began to fade into light.
A lovely evocative poem that brings the nighttime imaginings through to the dawn under the guidance of a lover, and you complete it all with your poetry. Uniting day and night through art and love.
It’s interesting how many of us who love to write put pen to paper at dawn. As always, I enjoyed your evocative poetry.
“Dawn delivered me to myself” is a line that resonates with me, Patty. There are things about the night I love, but none of them match the energy and anticipation that coms with dawn. You’ve crafted a beautiful poem here.