Morning has broken

Morning holds its breath between seasons. The air is cool enough to sting, yet threaded with the promise of warmth as a grey‑blue sky lightens overhead. Behind a thin haze of clouds, the sun glows white and veiled, diffusing its light into slow, cascading ripples across the lake’s calm surface. Through the stand of oak, birch, and pine, the forest appears half‑awake—dark conifers steady and shadowed, pale birch catching what little heat there is. The scent of pine is sharp and clean, cut through with the earthy dampness of decaying leaves releasing their stored cold as they warm. A loon’s call breaks the quiet, low and wavering, spreading across water still chilled by night. A woodpecker answers close by, its taps crisp and insistent, while far off the distant honking of returning geese drifts in, rough with motion—life pressing forward as the day slowly thaws.

I sit back in an aging pine chair, its surface worn smooth by years of weather and waiting. The wood holds the night’s cold, seeping through my coat, while the first reach of morning warmth brushes my face—an uneasy truce between what is leaving and what is arriving.  I try to stay inside the moment, to let the sounds carry me, yet my mind drifts forward, tugged by the unfinished contours of the day: tasks waiting, decisions deferred, worries rehearsing themselves without invitation. The beauty holds me, but only loosely.

And then a quieter voice rises beneath it all—spirit, conscience, something older than urgency—urging me to stay. To notice. To not rush past what is being freely offered. A simple hymn surfaces in my mind, a familiar praise of mornings breaking new, of birdsong spoken as if for the first time, of the world renewing itself without asking for permission. The words do not demand anything of me, only attention.

Morning has broken like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning
Praise for them springing fresh from the world

So I remain, breathing pine and earth, listening as cold loosens its grip and warmth advances inch by inch. For this brief hour, the day has not yet claimed me—and the morning, springing fresh from the world, asks only that I see it.