Sunrise on Lake Huron

There are one hundred and twenty-three 

Billowing swabs of water vapor and nothing

Crowded on the horizon this morning.

–

Up and up, layer on layer,

In full generosity,

They rise out from the flaming, yielding mirror,

Which held them all night.

–

They are ascending. 

By their very nature,

They climb the sky.

Carrying some small, seraphic secret,

Which makes them lighter than my existence.

–

They teem among one another.

These ever-changing, loamy continents.

Melding themselves into allegiance with one another,

And just as easily,

–

Divorcing themselves. 

–

I am drawn from moment to moment by the

Fireworks display of colors,

As the finale works its way up toward Earth’s crust.

–

And then I see it.

 A perfect halo of lambent light aspiring from beyond the rim. 

And I can sense myself coiling, my being flexing,

For this unused, age-old climax.

–

And just like that,

Time gives birth 

To a New Day.

–

And it is so

Discreetly brilliant-

This Perpetuum,

This cycle of continuance-

That all Creation breathes out this deathless moment.

And destruction and chaos are briefly omitted out of wonder.

–

Taken,

I forget to stare away from the blaze. 

–

After it’s all over, 

And life has resumed its hustling, 

All I have left of it’s impression on me 

Are the specks of refracted light,

Still burned into my vision,

–

And a path of white-yellow-gold,

Which extends from the end of the world,

Along that tumult of leaping, blue glass,

Toward the beach. 

To my feet.

-Lauren White