Morning Eyes

My waking mind at first resembles
the humor of my dream, until a distant instinct
pulls me toward a solid world.
The cusp between my waking and my dream worlds
lingers on my lashes
like a misty gauze before a gentle rain.

 

The inspiration for this poem, oddly enough, was Longfellow’s Day Is Done, particularly the stanza:

A feeling of sadness and longing
That is not akin to pain
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles rain.

While both poems describe easing into a transition, the transitions are very different.

Additionally, the poem was inspired by an email I recently read about mindful walking. I read the email when I first got up and was still using my morning eyes; I misread “mindful walking” for “mindful waking”. This serendipitous mistake was the catalyst for thinking about noticing the act of awakening. Basically with walking and with waking, being in the moment instead of wanting to be somewhere else can be a joyful daily practice.

Check out another poem here on Wind Rush about the joys of beginning the day in a mindful manner, Collective Awakening.

 

Photo attribution: By Ole Husby from Melhus, Norway (Misty morning, Fjellkjøsen bridge) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons