Poetry
Notes Toward Morning
5 min read • October 2023 • By Larkspur Words
Three short poems for early risers, from the Half-Light notebooks. Best read with the kettle on.
I · Kettle
First the click, then the choir —
water learning its one loud song.
The whole house holds its breath
like a diver. Like dawn
practising being day
in the blue throat of morning.
II · Windowsill
The geranium has outlived
two apartments and one love.
It asks so little — light, water,
witness — and gives
that red back, that small flag
of the ordinary, flying.
III · Departures
Everyone I love is leaving
in their sleep for somewhere kind.
I stay. I keep the lamp.
Morning comes up the street
like a friend who lost the address
but remembered the door.
About these poems
Written across one October of 5 a.m. starts, these three pieces later joined the Half-Light pamphlet's winter sequence. They remain my most-requested reading pieces — short enough to memorise, sturdy enough to carry.
Larkspur Words writes poems in the blue hour from Brooklyn, New York. Her pamphlet Half-Light appeared in 2022.