This morning I woke early to drive in the dark to join a dawn gathering. Standing outdoors with a few dozen others to welcome first light, we closed our eyes to feel knees soften and feet made strong upon the earth, to feel breath flow in and out. To hear caw of crow, whoosh of wind, to feel ourselves moved by the blowing air.

Ben, who teaches Tai Chi in the next town over from me, guided us to slowly open our eyes. Light fluttered through my eyelashes, revealing the pale illumined world, soft, not yet shining.

Just as Viennia, Ben’s wife, shared a story passed down from her Wampanaug elders about a time when a group of people learned the importance of gratitude to the natural order, a scatter of clouds began to pinken. Another revelation—together dark and light yield color.

All of this before we have even seen the sun. Then, there it is, through the trees, an uppermost arc of brightness. 

Standing among the other early wakers, all of us facing East, I’m lifted by an inner rising that expands and spills over—AWE!

Awe is ancient, timeless, unitive, and utterly of now. In awe, I am in the midst of gatherings from the beginnings of time, before time. In awe, we are not separate from anything and anyone else under the sun.

On this shortest, darkest of days, I offer a poem from a different time, with words that came from the movement and gesture preceding them.

Heart Folds Over

All is dark, dark beyond body

Beyond toes of feet, fingers of hands

Beyond knees, beyond knowing

Dark finds dark upon the dense ground.

Eyes close to see darkness

Arms seek and find each other 

On either side of head, hands reach

One on top the other, arrowing forth.

Sense of, not flying, being flown

Becoming a trajectory through 

What is it?

Not space but a kind of motionless travel.

Arriving, or is it stopping?

Stopping, or is it arriving?

Sitting, legs outstretched

Heart folds over

Into not dark, not light

Into something that is

Not anything

A hive of warmth.