Our Hearts Belong to the Dark

But alright then, what is the morning
And when? What could it possibly mean
Other than the coordination

Of human appointments and handoffs,
Human trade-offs in a human world?
Where is the matutinal magic

When all you care about is your work,
Your school, your family’s work and schooling,
The shifts of the nurses that check you,

The hour of vampire phlebotomists,
The hour when you as custodian,
Or baker, or barista, must start?

The wealthy have no time for morning,
And the working poor have even less,
And the drunks and poets sleep through it.

Do we need to define it for you?
Do we need to praise it like hunters
Setting out at first light in old poems,

Like appreciative nature lovers
Out for thoughtful strolls in newer ones?
We’ve found out that we love the morning

When it’s stuck in the middle of night,
The mice in the courtyard, cockroaches
Patrolling the bed and bathroom floors,

When the night shifts have barely reached lunch,
And anyone who spots your shadow
Would assume you’ve never been to bed,

Maybe never in your life. It’s still
A kind of morning, the way just past
The midwinter is a kind of spring,

A spring in the wings, although morning
Won’t ever allow a hint of light
In the East until an hour to dawn.

That’s the non-morning morning we like,
The night masquerading as morning,
Morning whose heart remains wholly night’s.