summer mornings

Summer mornings are beautiful and fragile things--as soon as one is in your ears and eyes and warms you enough to be inspired, it starts to escape. Rise too early and you feel nocturnal. Rise too late and you feel like you're already chasing the school bus as it drives away down the road.
Behind my house is a small bank and a slow brown creek. The water is nearly blocked from sight by fast-growing weed trees and ingrown underbrush, except where it is maintained as a hard-beaten track by my dog's daily watch. It looks east. In the early morning the sunlight is still clotted by the treetops, and crosses the back deck before coming into the house, where I will sit facing north, with a warm right leg.
As the light gets hotter and the cicadas warm up to their song, and as coffee passes through my teeth, I relish the few minutes of real morning. But soon the day's possibilities start to knock and pry and enter, and no matter how many times I look at the clock, it is already getting late.

"Let the morning bring me word
of your unfailing love,
for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul."
Psalm 143:8

"Turn my heart toward your statutes
and not toward selfish gain.
Turn my eyes away from worthless things;
preserve my life according to your word"
Psalm 119:36&37