I was up and out very early yesterday . I didn’t get very far… the lane at the end of my street to be exact… before I stopped the car and got out. The sun was cresting the horizon and the view over the fields was too beautiful to miss. Pushing my way through the gap in the hedge I stood among the last of the nettles to watch.

Dreaming when Dawn’s Left Hand was in the Sky

I heard a voice within the Tavern cry,

“Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup

Before Life’s Liquor in its Cup be dry.”

Omar Khayyam

It only lasted a few moments, as the sun lit the clouds, turning them to molten gold, but that burst of glory made the day begin in beauty. I was, not for the first time and certainly not the last, grateful to live away from the town, where dawn is seldom truly seen. The sun makes its appearance there much later, obscured by rooftops. In the town the horizon becomes our habitations and places of work… here I see the Sun-god caress the curved body of Earth with a lover’s tenderness, bathing her in the delicate grace of his light.

The bigger the city the less likely we are to see the world waken to a true dawn with our skyscrapers and edifices. We see the light flood the sky, perhaps, as it is doing here now. As I look out of my window the sky is suffused with the pale grey of a pigeon’s breast as the sun rises beyond my horizon… soon the eye of heaven will open above the distant hills. The sky is cloudy, I may not see that moment today… perhaps there will be but a blush against the clouds…or maybe just the silent creeping light suffusing the sky.

For now there is quiet… no birds sing welcome to the dawn. In a few more minutes they will lift their voices in joy and busily begin their day. I sit here frozen with the door to the garden standing wide for Ani and listen for the first song to begin. I cannot know what is to come… I can only wait in stillness and wonder.

Ah, fill the Cup: — what boots it to repeat

How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:

Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday,

Why fret about them if To-day be sweet!

Omar Khayyam

It doesn’t really matter if I, one small being with one pair of eyes, see the dawn in splendour. This morning the cloud is heavy and only the faintest flush of rose touches the world through their blanket. But as I write the birds begin to greet the morning, silhouettes turn from black to grey, less stark, less imposing, melding into the background of the day. Colour begins to warm the monochrome landscape and the whirring of busy wings becomes a subliminal thrum as the feathered denizens of the garden begin their busy quest for food.

Dawn crept upon a misty world almost unawares, stealing in behind the clouds. Yet I only have to listen to hear the world wake and know a new day has begun. Beneath this sky a world wakes or sleeps, holding all that I love in a single embrace.The sky may stay cloudy, or the mists may part to reveal the blue of beyond. Like the dawn, it is there, even though it is veiled from sight.

As winter shrouds the world in frozen, misted shadows there is comfort in that thought. Beyond the horizon is always a dawn waiting to unfurl, beyond the clouds the azure canvas waits for us to write our dreams upon it, beyond the curtains of darkest night a new morning waits silently in the wings and will not miss the cue. An eternal dance where the veils that are dropped reveal both dancer and watcher to be one and the same, sharing the rhythm of the heartbeat of creation.