Waiting For Sunrise ~ Donna Carrick

[Donna Carrick]

Is there a more perfect time of day than this? The world is hushed, children still asleep. Clock ticks quietly, reminding me of the passing of days, slowed for a moment, but soon to resume the race from week to week, year to year.

Watching for the sunrise. A thought, captured in the darkness, one crystalline piece of mind. Scooped up in the hand, placed in a jar, covered and put away for viewing at some later date.

We know from experience that date will never come. Life will once again breathe down our necks, insisting we complete one task or another before we collapse, exhausted, into another night.

But for this moment, for this solitary golden slice of time gleaming in the darkness in my kitchen while the others sleep on, sweetly unaware that I have stolen time itself right out from under their noses, life stands still.

Thought takes shape, expands, becomes grandeur and is painted onto the screen before my eyes. No more elusive wisps of philosophy, scattering at my attempted grasp. Instead, the hero’s satisfaction at the capture of an old friend, a memory, a long-forgotten catharsis.

But now the sun is rising. Time to put away this moment, tuck it into a drawer in the hopes there will be another chance to view it, another instant of stillness….

…before this life is over.