It’s Early

The sameness lives in change’s
Infinite finite patterns.
Losses sink in the sameness
Past edges of those patterns.

In the fog before morning,
Inevitable morning
Of inevitable day
And inevitable night,

One lone car’s headlights flash out
Far below your mountain perch,
As the car negotiates
Another curve in the dark

Woods that crowd the deep lake’s edge,
And it’s all fog and all dark,
Except it’s not. There’s the blink
Of the car for a moment

And the beginning of light
Under the dense banks of clouds,
Preceding the day before
Next night. All of it is tied—

The darkness, the damp, the fog,
That tiny, piercing moment
Of one car’s distant headlights,
This day you can’t stop, that night.