July 22, 2024
Greetings from the welcome,
I have a basket of words I’ve saved over the years. Some I wrote down thinking I’d look up the meaning, others I simply liked the looks of, or how it felt in my mouth. This one for its color, this for its slippery r’s, this word that I set aside to begin a story that waits still. A collection of curious and obscure and quirky words, letters pressed into service for purposes not yet fulfilled.
I am sitting outside as I write this, wrapped in summer. The only light is from my kitchen window, where a few moths are dancing, peering in at that life wondering what it means. I can make out the outline of the maple tree next to the deck, but everything else is cloaked in dark.
I am here in the quiet quiet, pulled into this magic hour by one of the words. Aubade.
Aubade, in the simplest description, is a poem or a song that celebrates the dawn. But as with many words, it’s never that simple.
I learned some time ago, after too many lessons, that when an idea comes to me in the night I need to get up and write it down, to pay attention. Too often I’ve ignored this urge and faced the morning with nothing but a vague whisper to hold onto. I was on the edge of sleep, hours ago, and felt this word nudge me, and so I got up and wrote it out. Aubade.
This is the backstage of the morning. The moon is behind me, a perfect disc, set in a small scrim of clouds. The stars above the tree’s canopy are steady but shy in the moon’s presence. It is a small cast, tidying up after the night’s performance, while other characters gather to greet the dawn.
A rooster is making a prediction, the only sound this morning. I know it is over half a mile away, and I say “Good morning,” out loud, which I believe he heard, a remarkable conversation.
Otherwise, it is still quiet. There are soft noises in the edge of the woods, where rabbits are nesting, where a doe is curled up with two fawns, invisible now, but I know. They are part of this too.
Only the sun paces with nervous energy, still unseen, not even a hint of light showing in the trees yet. This is still the night’s claim, even as the black becomes grey, even as the moon eases toward the opposite horizon.
The aubade, whether words or music, speaks to the arrival of morning, or joins the new day as it begins. It is the farewell to the night, still, and a gentle caution that the day is breaking. Because it is often written as lovers are parting, pushed back into their lives by the rising sun.
Just before dawn, the temperature drops a little, and maybe it’s my imagination but I can feel that coolness now. There is a slight dampness on my skin and I know without seeing it this is part of the dew that is gathering in the grasses and leaves just inside the dark beyond the tree.
The birds are waking. The first few were making conversation in the dimness, and now it sounds like everyone is getting ready for the morning. Above me, in the top edges of the maple, there is a pale gray showing. A thin layer of cloud has moved over the stars and now there is only that batten of flannel in the sky behind me.
The aubade was born in a tradition that has long faded, in a time when lovers whispered regrets and slipped from warm beds into the crisp air of the false dawn. The poet John Donne called the sun a ‘busy old fool’, and urged it to stick to other work and not interrupt affairs of the heart. “Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.”
The sky is pearl gray between the branches now, light enough to see into the edge of the forest, and make out the green that summer brought. As I wrote this I could make out the doe rising up from its bed and moving between the trees.
The night has loosened its hold now, and the birds are celebrating in earnest, singing and gossiping. There are other noises, car doors, the far-off sound of a truck changing gears on the county road. The world spins in greased grooves.
When the sun comes it will not be a ta-daa moment, but an easing over, a turning in the blankets of the morning, a gentle waking, a soft introduction. My aubade will be my quiet witness.
I am grateful to have been in this moment, this imperfect tipping of the light, brought to me by a word in the ether of sleep. I am lucky to celebrate with the birds and the leaves and the moths and this hint of a breeze that joins me as I say, welcome to this beautiful world, My Morning. Let’s go see what waits for us.
Hope this finds you serenading the dawn,
David
Copyright © 2024 David Smith
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