Earlybird

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Dawn came up like a pale flower, an expert at rising.
I wished you could have seen it. I wished your eyes had moved.
You were in bed, wrapped like a frightened bird
in the white sheets of your nest.
I wished you could have seen this dawn. I wished your eyeballs
had been alive, the winking black marbles they are.

Dawn came up like a pale flower,
modestly and unaware of its beauty.
It never knew its beauty, it never cared.
Neither did you.
You stayed in bed, unmoving as a frozen pond; the ultimate sleeper.
I am mentally nomadic, I have a mind that strays,
my gray matter goes where it wants.

I was there, this morning, when dawn rose. I rooted it on, rooted on its
quiet, pink explosion. But it did not need me.
I was superflous as old indian pennies.
The dawn, my dear, was a flowing, pale flower,
coming up anyway,
  whether our eyes, and the eyes of the mind knew it or not.
But I wished you could have seen it, in your own lilting way.


© Lamont Palmer

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