Sometimes we will not find what we are looking for because it is not there. If we can give up on it, we discover something similar, but altogether different, something surprising and humbling is instead, waiting loudly somewhere else.

the most spectacular sunrise,
is always the one
that shares the stage of morning
with blankets of cloud rent
by wide patches of sky,

sharing the headline
with the untidied set design
of last nights clouds
and veils of mist,
prepared in the darkness
of the songless morning,
before even
the early vigil of the thrushes.

on days like this,
the regal star of morning,
pinned like a brooch
to the receding veil of night
bows,
and all the world stops,
and there is nothing like to it
on this wide earth.

but on other mornings,
when the stage of the eastern sky is clear
as if clouds had not been conceived at all,
as if the heavy veil of night
had always been this thin,
accompanied even by a full orchestra of birdsong
and the moon perhaps near full,
the sunrise is still beautiful,
but pale of cheek,
as if it had forgot its lines.

and when you find the grace
to look instead
to the back of the theatre,
to the utter west,
you discover the clouds are banked with modesty
away from the spectacle of sunrise,
unaware of the breathtaking majesty they reflect
in their preparedness
to simply be
and the light of creation
of the first day,
echoed in their chorus.

© 2022 Rocco Jarman
From the collection Keeper of the Flame.