What is Due the Dew

I am occasionally prone to bouts of catastrophe. Whether it is something to do with my professional life, my marriage, or my personal demons, I have a way of burrowing deep down into my fears about it. Anxiety is a jackhammer, and I've got concrete to remove. So, in order to do this, I have realized the necessity for a routine surrounding meditation and writing in the morning. I wake up early to do this. 4:45, 5:00 am. I give myself plenty of time to make coffee, shit, whatever... the morning stuff. So I can sit down in peace and not think for 10 minutes. I get to bathe in the first morning light that dawns on the populated front range of Colorado. I see the light as the mountains do, born fresh.

I will do lots of things in the morning surrounding meditation, which is a mixture of practices from the Waking Up app. It's an expensive app. This is not a plug. I just want people to know where I get my meditation practice from: I get it from an expensive app. Sam Harris runs a meditation cartel, to which I am a willing slave/party. It's a good app. As far as app servitude goes it could be worse. It's 15 dollars a month. Which isn't bad. And it introduced me to a plethora of meditation techniques and what's different about them.

This has led me to the occasional stanza of poetry in the morning. I write mostly science fiction - trudging through the first first draft of a novel about a collapsing society and 3,000-ft. tall space pyramids is not an easy task. However, I have always found that poetry comes easy. I haven't written poems in a very long time. Aside from the occasional love ballad or "apology" ballad to my wife, I haven't written poetry, willingly or otherwise, since I was in college. There is something about school-mandated verse that just seemed antithetical to me as a young man. But now, as a 33-year old adult, using meditation as a tool, seeing new perspectives on things, I found the urge to write poetry. To create something that is not particularly serious in its intent, but rather is an attempt to create internal "ah has" those little moments of eureka you have when you figure something out. Meditation can have this effect on you, meditation or contemplation.

So, early morning in Colorado I had the urge to write this poem after staring down the barrel of a beautiful blooming peony in my backyard. Wet grass sparkling in the dawning light. Summer is like spring in Colorado, early morning are colder, and give you an experiential jolt to start the day.

Here's what I wrote,

What is Due the Dew?

Cold morning moments resting

the grass atop itself.

Weighing down the specks,

Things webbed together

- ebbed together -

across the expanse of my presence.

Is this a dream or waking?

To be awake is to see

the dew melt away,

to see all the light brings to life.

But what is due the dew?

Is it simply a dream?

As it dissipates, it leaves,

and the arid air carries the infernal light

across everything.

Relentlessly, its right.

Time to carry this moment

away, and me along with it.

Just like the dew, to

whom nothing is due.

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by Terry Wayne Carpenter, Jr. - 6/18/20 - 6:30 am MT - Parker, CO.