Looking Forth as The Much-Loved Morning

Abstract

Looking Forth as The Much-Loved Morning Robert Vivian (bio) And seeing that it is green and plentiful and full of bird song, can you make the teeming buds and blossoms your heart's very own some poetical way to marry and give yourself over to the new day and the much-loved morning, the much-betokened and becalmed morning coming into the fullness of daylight and a shoulder sore from casting, the much-loved morning whose gentle nudge of pre-dawn praise must flower out into every embrace if it is to live and breathe in the sight of the ever present and creative Lord, the much-loved morning whose awakening is myriad the whole world over so that any horizon tips over into bright, brimming sweetness in breaking earth shell of whispered glowing no human ear can hear but in which it echoes any way, the much-bequeathed morning and betided waking or is it rapt holy awareness of a fish or any winged creature, I woke and listened in heaven as heaven tolled for me and these few words of beggarly praise, the much-loved morning and the all- glistening morning sprinkled with dew and the lyrical mists hovering over the fields and threading their precious spokes of lofty smoke through the trees full of godly joy and sorrow, how many speckled fawns are even now getting to their rickety knees under their mothers' watchful gaze in the round fullness of such tender affection, the four directions and the four seasons already turning and moving in their sockets and sinew writing their hymns in the cirrus high above across the sky in concert with the stars and all heavenly spheres in the rhythm that holds us all, the much-loved morning showing us the way to resurrection and another and still another all the days that are left to us for there is an eternity in the first cup of coffee and an eternity in the quick, busy chirp of the chipmunk on the back deck darting from hole to hovel, an eternity for any yawn to break into a smile or laughter, an eternity of stillness in the cool doorway before dawn and the trembling first flicker of a lighted candle, and the much-loved morning, the all-adoring and supine morning slowly rising [End Page 220] to its feet, the newly born morning untouched and unafraid reaching out to you and to me, reaching out to all that lives and hopes and breathes, looking forth once more through a single drop of dew and the soft glowing of leaf light under the eaves, the half-opened window trembling faintly in the shining gossamer of a spider web, that delicate and graceful text we are meant to take into our hearts and recite again and again until we go back to heaven here this very now, this very morning, moving once more to greet the day as it rises. [End Page 221] Robert Vivian Robert Vivian's latest book is All I Feel Is Rivers, published in 2020 by the Univ. of Nebraska Press. He is the author of nine other books. Copyright © 2021 Association for Public Religion and Intellectual Life