Get your sunrise any way you can

I’m sitting in a Second-Cup corner chair behind a large plate glass window, listening to counter clatter and the general jump-start stirrings of a new day. Coffee from a southern continent goes down hot and strong.

I wait, dawn is promised. These days I take my sunrises anyway I can get them. Brightly mirrored on glass-sided high-rises. In pale auras surrounding inner-city towers. Angular, in frames, squares and rectangles. Muted on glazed concrete. Even parodied by 30 stories of orange poly tarps, draped over a gestating condo. And if I can’t get them here, I remember them.

I remember another window on a hill out of town. I’m there. Red horizon streaks swell, become redder, and then, as if their own brilliance was too much to bear,  they loosen their terrestrial grip and spread themselves into soft shades of coral and meadowlark-breast yellow.

Sunrises belong to bodies. They speak possibility, they show up the lie of just another sunrise. They burn away the ethereal feel of indoors. The sunrise you receive today deposits itself and is stored in somatic cells for a future smile.

Yesterday evening, unsmiling, I walked home, east past the condos, past the strip mall, and my mind walked into an open field and watched the last of twilight play through a row of naked poplars.

This morning, along the less obstructed view south of the CN Tower, I see some crimson at the edge of town. And then I see it rise in the inexplicable smile of a young woman crossing 104 Avenue.