Good morning!

The first snap of winter cold hits my face as I step down off the back porch and set out on my morning walk. The moon is small and hard and high up in the air, flooding the street with a light brighter than the street lamps, and the stars in Orion’s belt sparkle fiercely against a black sky.

I love the early morning world. Street lamps blink red and green for no one. I walk in the shadows of the trees. The air is fresher now than at any other time during the day, so that I can catch even the most subtle of scents, and I know as I pass in which house cigarette smokers are sleeping and which house embraces a family of cats. The windows are all dark.

And then, at 5:30, the buses start their runs down Cayuga Street, great lumbering beasts, lighted from within, empty except for the drivers. I see a black woman through the plate glass window of the laundromat, watching the dryer spin around, her head tilted sleepily to one side.

I drop my letter in the mailbox. The little door squeals and clanks. It feels good to swing my legs as I walk to the creek, where the water chuckles endlessly against the stones. A jogger goes by, his reflectors gleaming, and a light goes on in a bathroom, in a kitchen. Soon, there will be students walking to school, and cars and walkers of dogs and lines of wage workers, some angry, some defeated, waiting in lines at the bus stops. By then, I will be in my own car on the long drive to work, holding these quiet and shadowy moments in my heart.

I pause a moment on the back steps to send you a blessing—a blessing for you kids, for you friends, for you unknown reader.

Good morning.
Love,
Lilly