Sunlight indicates the dawning of a new day’s potential,

striking the hill across the valley, alerting me to life:

sparrows peck in the strawberry bed, flutter in the birdbath

and the blackbird seeks vital food for her hedge-hidden chicks.

 

A new dawn’s blessings break for me every twenty-four hours,

I am guilty of taking many for granted, trusting fate

to bring me another, ad infinitum, until they stop –

when I will no longer be around to notice nor to care.

 

I may be wrong in my belief that these days will continue,

my allocation’s finite, supplied by opportunities

to spend time alive in our universe, on our planet,

experiencing the unique blessing that is life on Earth.

 

Dawn’s rhythmic familiarity brings wanton wastefulness,

I’ve allowed many days to drift past unnoticed, unseized,

days I’ll never remember, nor see again, lost to my life,

opportunities for living squandered in listless blankness.

 

Some days I’ve suffered tortured hours, living painful moments

strung together with torment, wishing for a new dawn’s chances,

some days I’ve intentionally let go of, watching them pass,

unable or unwanting to live them, nor remember them.

 

Each cyclical dawn is an opportunity to seize life,

endless potential to create what life I see worth living,

I can grip chance, forge what I like from life’s living furnaces,

possibility’s my Angel in uncertainty and grief.

 

I have been fortunate to have survived many of my days,

adding up to years and decades, with people I truly love,

with folk who have made my chanced experiences worth living,

the chapters and verses I’ve seen have been worth hanging on for.

 

I resolve to seize my days and play a role in those folk’s lives,

making their days, weeks, months, years and decades equally worthwhile,

surpassing, in fact, the excellence these folk have brought to mine,

playing my own role in their reason each day is worth living.