i rise with the dawn and shift the stones away from my eyes revealing the brightness of a life i thought just moments ago stolen by their night
i look down and touch the holes driven through my spirit by the nails of hatred and passion not healed or forgotten but no longer in focus
i stand as an infant lamb crawling from its manger at first light shaky on my newly-woken feet but gathering strength with each footstep i take
as i emerge from my nighttime tomb and push back the blankets of the morning mist i breathe not the air but taste the sunshine seeming to radiate from my face
i step out onto the mountain and catch my breath at the heaven of beauty alive around me in each note or birdsong i swallow as my eyes adjust to the reflections
the trees shimmer just at the edge of my vision as i follow the dove as it’s feet leave the branch without a moment of ripple and it pushes the boundaries between this world and the land of clouds and echoed spirits
i inhale the calm around me not for a second in stillness but the constant unhurried motion of the spirit flowing through the rocks and leaves scurrying in tiny paws and thundering in the distance in hooves barely seeming to break yet peaceful in their endless cycles in search of grass
my feet take me down the mountain path to the waiting eyes of humans fresh from their own cocoons and my voice splits the world of nature and civilization with a simple word of greeting shared in return by the startled crowds on the streets below
you believed morning would come and we would wake into it but you couldn’t be sure
yet here we are in the light not only of a new day but the treasure of moments devoted to nothing more than creating themselves as gifts arising from nothingness
you have risen with me