At five, I wake with the false dawn
the call of nature at three
an hour of chasing Morpheus
two hours of fitful sleep
haunted by the illusion of wakefulness
the battle is lost to the new day
and I rise before backache sets in
who needs more than six hours sleep anyway
Seen from space
the line between night and day
looks sharp enough
but on the ground
the scattered rays of the coming sun
diffuse through the atmosphere
gradually dissolving the dark
and banishing ancient and childhood fears
Finally the buildings opposite
lose their grey and acquire a yellow tinge
that brightens to ruddy Welsh gold
as the sun peeps over the horizon
and for a moment, filtered by atmosphere
we can behold the true god
whose gravity rules the solar system
sustaining life through the burning up of its body
Children may sleep through
the transition from night to day
but as we age, the need for sleep diminished
the penumbra of consciousness and light attune
and though we may lie next to another
we awaken alone in the liminal space
that exists between false dawn and sunrise
before we rise – another day to face…
© Andrew Wilson, 2024
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, challenges us to write about Dawn writing in the poetry style of the A L’Arora, a form created by Laura Lamarca:
- 4 stanzas (or more)
- 8-lines per stanza (can split with line break after 6)
- only lines 6 & 8 are to rhyme as x,x,x,x,x,a,x,a; x,x,x,x,x,b,x,b etc
- no syllable count per line
Poetry Subject: Lamarca’s A L’Arora derives from “Aurora” – Italian for “dawn”