Morning Thanks--Mornings in the country

Its plain old reality teaches forbearance, I suppose, but it's just impossible not to feel a pinch of regret, maybe more. Right now, my fingers curled over the keyboard, a caramel swath of early morning light glows northward from its warmest point, mostly east of me, where, soon enough, that very glow will open in incandescence. Still, I know the morning has come later, not appreciably. I don't have to watch the clock to realize that the days are slowly shortening.

Dawn will come again, and unlike yesterday, when unseen winds threatened everything standing just outside my door, it will take over the night as lovingly as ever. There are no clouds right now, so there will be no drama other than the bridegroom himself stepping forth, as the Psalms say, from his chamber, albeit a few minutes later than yesterday. 

I know of two wide-open spaces marked by a seemingly endless row of perfectly placed rocks that still point at the exact spot the sun rose (past tense) this weekend, summer solstice. Like some mammoth sun dial, those rocks tell time as they did a couple of centuries ago right here. They make clear that yes, you're right, the days are shorter and it's time once again to remember an end to warm dawns, to consider the advent of yet another winter.

Winter dawns can be perfectly beautiful, but they're notoriously unaccommodating here in Siouxland. We make do, but right now, despite the gorgeous caramel swath outside my window, it's impossible not to note that this morning's show has begun a bit later than yesterday, all of which reminds me that light and warmth and welcome are slowly receding behind the spectacle. 

Yesterday, I'm told, storm winds wiped out machine sheds, grain bins, and a couple of airplane hangers just down the road. Farther north, a rogue cell reigned more havoc, I guess. Here, what tore into the river valley was mostly bluster. I stepped out in the middle of a 60-mile-an-hour visitation that rose and fell inside ten minutes, no real losses, just noise--terrifying noise but little more.

But it's been a gorgeous June to to be here out in the country, to watch the morning rise from its own late nights. These are all this month's pics, just a step into our backyard. This art show is mine and the birds to take in just about every day. It's been a great June run. Here's Siouxland's Sabbath Solstice in citrus. 

The show's not over either. Even if the terra firma turns a little quicker, there will always be a dawn. Soon enough, it will arrive at a moment when a harvest moon sinks away. Then a first snow will shine in its appearance. All winter long, just outside my door the gallery will be open.

Besides, think of what dawn does to us, the world that waits for the morning.

It fires ordinary bromegrass into morning glory.

All in a morning's work. 

Here it is, this morning's plain Jane dawn. Nothing to crow about maybe, but still striking, a new day on the rise.

Just thought I'd report in this morning, in the manner of that old curmudgeon Thoreau, who dared to insist that others--not him, surely!--lived lives of quiet desperation.

In "Economy," the first chapter of Walden, he claims that in his short life he's already had a half-dozen or more professions, including being a reporter of dawns and morning and evening storms. "For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation," he says, "whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got only my labor for my pains." 

And the man didn't have a clue about blogging.

But then this. "However, in this case my pains were their own reward."

In the face of such rewards as these, even an old curmudgeon can be sweet. 

This morning's thanks are for the morning's story just outside.