Rising

(Found here)

So many ways of waking. In summer

a blackbird chorus, four AM, erupts,
light from the east already pouring
on the kitchen floor. Some days
the street crew’s motorized equipment
vrooms through the suburb,
its residents asleep or half awake.
Might be the neighbour’s van
revving for the drive to work.

One day
she called the ambulance
minutes before daybreak. Her husband,
brushing his teeth in the bathroom
had collapsed, the entire day,
her entire life in that one instant
disarranged. Impossible
to imagine
the morning you won’t somehow
wake: birds, radio, the shrill alarm
clock calling the world to order,
signalling the advent
of another day.

~Sarah Klassen