Morning Song

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I took Greek as part of my undergraduate language requirement. No, I’m  not really a glutton for punishment. You see, Kalamazoo College required two languages; one Romance, one Classical. I had already used up German as my Romance language and Latin and I had a painful breakup in high school. So I found myself in Professor Poggi’s Greek 100 class, sometime in sophomore year. He was an excellent teacher and shared with us fascinating stories about the satyr dramas, the burlesque entr’actes that stitched together the longer cycles of Greek drama. Like many aspects of my undergraduate career, I wish I had paid closer attention. The point is, I still remember one phrase from the Iliad, or was it the Aeneid? Maybe the Odyssey?  And no I don’t remember the phrase in Greek, but I remember the translation: “the rosy fingered dawn.”

I don’t know what was going on in my life at the time, but somehow that phrase struck deep, and remains at the ready whenever I happen to be awake and attentive when the sky begins to lighten. There is magic in morning, in the feeling of the world made new, before life and memory and obligation drag their muddy feet over the threshold, their dirty prints smearing a path to reality. 

Maybe it is the light, that of the rosy fingers, golden glances, purple clouds sliding into blue, still tinged with crimson, hiding the fading sparkles of starlight and moonglow.

Maybe it is birdsong. The greeting call of the larks gently nudging the notes of the owls, whippoorwills and mockingbirds back into muffled night. Soon the hidden songbirds knit a hallelujah to greet the rising sun, occasionally interrupted by the raucous counterpoint of a murder of crows.

Maybe it is something as simple as the air. Breezes that hint of forests just over the horizon. Of an ocean. The almost forgotten tang of autumn’s burning leaves. A crisp heralding of Winter’s flurries or the gentle reminder of Spring’s lilacs. Summer’s drowsy new mown hay.

Ah, the treasured prints of those rosy fingers of dawn. I do wish I could spend more time in their company - if only they didn't get up so early.

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