The Dawn's Early Light

I do not count myself among those who are "morning people." I awake slowly and reluctantly and typically with some measure of grouchiness. I count myself among the night owls.

I used to work roughly 3 p.m. until midnight or 1 a.m. at a newspaper. Loved those hours. Never set an alarm clock in those days. But, alas, my working those deadly nightshade hours became a skein of ruinous and profligate ways swirling into a self-destructive vortex. I was plucked from that vortex, rescued in ways that are hard now to define except to echo the title of a tragic but heartfelt book by Joseph Heller, one that used parentheses more artfully than any other book I've read:

Something Happened.

I used to feel guilty about not being a morning person, as if it reflected a negative and defeatist and bankrupt view of the world.

I'm resigned to it now. . . .not the worldview but the morning's slow march. I don't think there's much choice. It may even reflect my alleged sleep apnea and multiple awakenings every night. Hence, my nearly daily morning heavy weight of grogginess. The hangover of memory and night and darkness.

But is there anyone more luminous and prayerful and mystical and poetic about morningtime than

The Secretary of Dawns?

I offer you the rich tableau of his incandescent and singular ponderings of dawn.