The dark climb before dawn
to catch the first light
before it grows common.
Windows rolled down
to un-spelled anagrams
all over night’s loose gown.

Memory of an early downpour
In the mind’s garden, rain’s
lucent sweat become gems.

The skin keens to another solitude
suspected nearby in a forest
born of fable.
Twin Tapeta Lucida orbs
stare then shy off
in a sparkle of paws.

On the crest of the hill
between huddle and shove
whole families swagger
in pyrotechnics of chatter
and silence expecting
the reward of a sunrise.

A boy turns big-eyed
from the irresolute dawn
veiled in scraps of mist
enticed by another vigil for
another luminous recompense  
that will appear just as quietly.

Stephanie Sears

Stephanie V Sears is a French and American ethnologist ( Doctorate EHESS, Paris 1993), free-lance journalist, essayist and poet whose poetry recently appeared in The Deronda Review, The Comstock Review, The Mystic Blue Review, The Big Windows Review, Indefinite Space, The Plum Tree Tavern, Literary Yard, Clementine Unbound, Anti Heroine Chic.