Instinct for Praise

The day has begun.
Across the ink-dark bay, the barest hints of light.
Pale pinks and a suggestion of peach, etch
an outline of Salt Spring Island.

A dark-eyed junco is the first to sing. Now,
the breeze-less morning gathers its long shadows,
and the sun slowly explodes above the island’s crown.

In my place at the window, it is good to feel my smallness
and my brevity, like the pale flame of a match, against
the sky’s red blaze and wordless horizon.

I can’t trace the time, exactly, but my gratitude
has become corroded; my instinct for praise
has been dulled by the din of topical news,
its noise, like the seventh circle of hell.

I’ve learned that the first birds to sing in the dawn chorus
are those with the biggest eyes. So here I am,
doing a kind of mind-eye tai chi, to get my soul back.

Me and the dark-eyed junco, reading the light,
analyzing the alchemy of mist on the bay,
studying the vague sway of a looming hemlock,
the incarnadine storyline of a neighbour’s magnolias.

I never made it through Dante, but one thing stuck:
that dawn should open my mouth in song,
and to will to refuse is hell.