Sunday, October 18, 2015

O' Dark Thirty




Getting ready to run across the Grand Canyon next week, and this poem landed in my lap. We actually will start at 3AM, but seriously, who is mentally awake at 3? I look forward to seeing a nearly full moon, which will likely fade behind a canyon wall by 4. But, by 4 my mind will be awake, and ready to see ... all there is to see.

Another Grand adventure.

Four In The Morning....

The hour from night to day.
… The hour from side to side.
The hour for those past thirty.

The hour swept clean to the crowing of cocks.
The hour when earth betrays us.
The hour when wind blows from extinguished stars.
The hour of and-what-if-nothing-remains-after-us.

The hollow hour.
Blank, empty.
The very pit of all other hours.

No one feels good at four in the morning.
If ants feel good at four in the morning
—three cheers for the ants. And let five o’clock come
if we’re to go on living.

- Wislawa Szymborska