Vox Populi
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Robert Cording: New Morning
Always that moment
when I wake up
in the dark
before dawn
and the first birds—
in Florida, martins,
in Connecticut,
mourning doves—
make their sounds
over and over, like
and unlike, the way
I once said the name
of my dead son
again and again,
as I waited for
the new day,
no sun yet to say
it was here—
only the birds
that announced
the morning
even before it had
unfolded,
the alchemy
of a lead sky
brightening
into day.
~~~~~
Copyright 2025 Robert Cording
Robert Cording’s many books include Heavy Grace (Alice James, 2022) and In the Unwalled City (Slant, 2022).
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Such a lovely elegy–as beautiful in tone as the imagery is in its clarity.
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Thanks, everyone. Your comments truly touched me. A special thanks to Jim and to whatever, as Sean says, “calls us from the shadows.”
Bob
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Morning meditation, windows open, soft grey, the sound of the little fountain and the birdbaths, crow, mocking bird, oriole, goldfinch, hummingbird wings and the trash truck. Tashi returns through her door with the remaining scent of jasmine, walks by my chair, waits for my hand to drift down to her fur, cool and comforting, a repetion of yesterday, day before, day before that…
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lovely prose poem, Barb. Thank you.
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I love the alchemy at the end, turning the “lead sky” into gold, but he sticks with an actual sky’s brightening, so light itself becomes the gold the poet-alchemist searches for.
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Yes. Thank you, Mary.
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When Pam died, dawn’s colors curdled. I refused to greet them.
I soon shunned any beauty that stunned with awe…. But the pre-dawn cardinals would greet with their rise-and-shines each new March, so come-what-may, life continued, (unlike those inflated Christmas animals playing tinny tunes outside the Hospice Center). I turned from their hot-airs of emptiness to birdsong that trills grief’s exile back home.
Robert Cording’s poem evoked this cycle of life once again. He says it all so well. A couple of tears to him in farewell.
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Beautiful, Jim. Thank you for this elegy disguised as a comment.
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Yes Jim!
Beautiful!
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The morning and where I go to sit and watch and listen, thing I rarely miss, makes me an early recipient of this lovely poem and its effects. If qualified for nothing else, the darkness outside and within make me your reader Ser Robert. I’ve been at this long enough to say, no matter how and where we step, and what calls us from the shadows, we are treading toward dawn.
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