When Morning Comes Around

Visual Poem. Beckoning Chair.

Every now and then, a miracle happens. Sometimes a cardinal splashes down in the birdbath; sometimes I walk for a mile and my knee doesn’t hurt; sometimes the words just come for a Story Picture; sometimes I run into a friend on a city street; sometimes the checkbook balances; sometimes the pansies take root in the clay pot; and sometimes I get to spend a day or two in a place so magical, I am transported.

This is a chair in a room in a very old house, owned and created by an inspiring and wildly talented artist. When an old house is a visual poem, a chair is not just a chair, a cup not just a cup. Stepping over its worn threshold, I can see the way light pours through watery glass and plays on the fibers of a threadbare carpet; see the underpinnings of a chair, the way it’s tufted and tacked and flounced and fringed; see the imprint of countless, long-ago footsteps on the steep, narrow stairs; see the glorious color of a withered bunch of daffodils long past their prime over a once-smoking fireplace.

It is a sensual arriving, this house. When I listen, I hear the wind whistling off the ocean just across the street. I hear the gale pushing through the cracks of the front door with a stormy cacophony of howls and whooshes and clatters, and in response, I hear the old house creak and whisper its warnings. In the morning, after the storm, I hear the spring chives growing and the alley cats skittering up the rough fences and the songs of last night’s black stars.

And I smell Ireland: stone, clover, thatch, potatoes, linen, Guinness, and the Book of Kells. I smell muddy wellies, marmalade, wool, clotheslines, fog, tobacco, and bread rising. I smell crooked chimneys and moss. I smell my grandmother’s scoldings. My grandfather’s late hours.

When morning comes around in this poem of a house, there are plushy geraniums climbing the watery windows and eggs sunny-side-up on the slightly burned toast. There are line-dried sheets caught in the now-sweet wind; there is strong coffee in French cups. And in this house, I stand in my thick-soled shoes and swirly skirts and discover light again in my bones, flowers in my lungs, and I sing…if not quite an aria…certainly a heartswelling chorus of thanks.