5:30 Lateness

In the 5:30am lateness
I awake to find
the bed rattled,
the coffee unmade,
medication untaken,
the day un-begun.

A cat paw at my feet,
mewing for, I don’t know.
Breakfast?

I was dizzy when I opened my eyes,
world twister, turning, topsy turve-ing.
That happens these days,
days of mornings I don’t see,
of quiet hauntings
of 4am alarms
and almost sleeping in.

Drip drip goes the faucet.
Sip sip goes the coffee.
I wonder why
I’m up so early,
what I’m hunting for in the primeval dawn.

Or what haunts me.

Devotion, once counted
by minuets spent,
Bible open in my lap,
prayer mumbled off my lips:
a habit of something
I was never good at.

Still, there is something
to say about books, poems, and page
given and received in the late early morning.

Quiet.

Alone with my thoughts,
I am confronted with
myself unadorned,
as I really am—
rattled
unmade
untaken
un-begun.

And every alarm
that wakes me,
when I get up,
dizzy and I don’t know,
turns on a light—
squinting—
by which
the ego slowly dies.

And something else
comes to arise.