Photo by Austin Schmidt on Unsplash

“The whole world is a series of miracles, but we’re so used to them we call them ordinary things.” –Hans Christian Andersen

 

Rise and shine

This morning this morning
hours before the alarm
3:25 am daughter comes to bedroom door

Mommy I need a lozenge my throat is scratchy

Oh wavering reader!
How can I paint this
so you see the brilliance between the layers
of color of hue of tint
and tone?

Sunrise orange—
she can identify a feeling in her body.

Fade to peach—
that took—what? 25 years?

Coral becomes pink,
almost lavender—
she found the words to match the sensation.

Further down, a dusky orchid—
using language not her own
not native
but the one most of us think common.

A language she and I could share—
of this I could once only dream.

(Thank you Adrienne Rich.
You’d love this girl of mine
if you could meet her.*)

Blue, blue morphing into midnight—

Mommy my throat is scratchy.

I think I’m going backwards,
should have begun with white
streaked with lemon,
this sunrise.

I skipped red entirely.
It was dark.
She came to me.
She was light.

Hours before it was visible to most,
she brought dawn.
3:25 am

My throat is scratchy

Oh miracle,
Oh blessed day.

She is 33
and I am fat with pride,
cheeks puffed out
like the balloons hers were

when she smiled
in that picture, four years old
like the first time,
the first the first the first time

My throat is scratchy
she said

Mommy
she came to find me
I need
she said
A lozenge.

She came to my bedroom door.

For this I say—
I sing
I prayed
I am down on my knees
beyond composure—

I say I say
3:25 am.
Sunrise
in the dark

I never went back to sleep

How could !?
The joy too bright too bright

for this I say
Oh day, oh daughter!
Oh goddess of autisms and other permutations

For this I sing

Amen.

 

–Melinda Coppola

*Adrienne Rich was one of my first favorite poets. Her book “The Dream of a Common Language” still lives among my books on a shelf in my writing area.