Dawn



What now is dawn, but that light steps
up over the rock face lifting crags,
darkened, out of the mountain’s heart?

Snow sits on the face of the north slope
where the cold has stopped all year
though it glitters in the chill of moon and star.

No eye seeks but the great gray owl’s
hunting the night moths making way
in the stillness that comes ere waking

to the Sun, pitiless beyond the sky,
shaking its blue afterwards on the day
that dazzles the mountain into the sea.


               –– by Jess Morton