In that moment before morning
when the first faint fans of light
spread up from behind the immaculate rim of the planet
into the dark velvet sky with its weak constellations
and into the Milky Way arching overhead
like a basket handle connecting the visible ends
of the long, shadowed, empty beach,
I am neither old nor young,
merely between my own vanishing points,
as if I had no origin or destination,
like the waves that come from nowhere forever,
and I am grateful, grateful,
for this one, fine moment alive on the earth,
and for the day that will be with me soon enough.
