Dark when I wake. Darkness wrapping the house and yard, blackness a soft touch on my shoulders. The new clock, all white, with feathers for hands, points from its small circle base, a straight, bright line on the wall: 6:00 a.m. No light on the horizon yet, the first light the embers in the wood stove that I pump to orange with the bellows. The kindling pops up in flame, then a log. I sit in front of the glow and the darkness sits around me.
Anne P. commented on my blog last night. The new you. Comprised of the past, but not consumed by it. Surrounded by happiness, it shines through you. As the darkness recedes, crests, retreats once more. Left on the shore with a new wholeness. Life, surfing the waves.
David and his brother and I drove to the coast on Saturday, old people going for a drive, because David’s brother’s back and hip are too sore to walk much. That’s life surfing the waves, getting to the pulse of tide however we could. Little Harbor was brimming, tide as high as I’ve seen it. Driving north, after a loop around Rye Harbor, we passed a stretch of marsh, grass golden between the pools of hard blue water chopped up by a cold wind, a striking contrast.
Beauty is so often about how one visual bumps up against what is next to it. “No one travels to see flat land,” someone once said to me and it seems true. People travel to see mountains and cities. Or great expanses of water, which are flat but fluid, the contrast between firm ground and a sloshing medium, all movement, wash and warble, come and go, in and out. A shore where we find ourselves, before, after, now.
When the light comes it’s gray.
Grace Mattern 
I’ve been published,(sort of), thanks!
I love the evolving you. When I read your words, I hear them spoken also, and feel your present energy. You have to be self assured, and brave, to open yourself so freely – bravo!
Grace, a steady light in the darkness, a comfort, even when the dawn is gray.
Thanks for a wonderful anchor for my writing yesterday. Happy to be your “publisher.”