12.18.2025 – hello, sun in my face

hello, sun in my face
watch, now, how I start day in
happiness, kindness

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety—

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light—
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

WHY I WAKE EARLY in Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver by Mary Oliver (Penguin Press: New York, 2017).

This was the moments before the sun came up out of the Atlantic Ocean today, December 18, 2025. One of the shortest days of the year.

I go from fighting with the morning traffics where everyone who has to be to work on 7 am, tries to makes over the bridge and through the woods of Hilton Head Island even though there are only two roads.

The fun part is that for about a half mile before it splits, the road is 5 lanes wide and closes down to two lanes either side of the split.

There are all of us who work on the island and then there are those poor visitors who think they had driven hours to leave the woes of traffic behind.

I do feel sorry for them as I yell at them to get out of my way.

Then off to the left on the little used Cross Island Parkway and all at once I am on the Cross Island Bridge with the only view available on the island because any island in the low country … is FLAT and covered with trees.

And off to my left is the Atlantic Ocean and 1,000s of miles of nothing and the sky and the rising sun.

Best preacher that ever was,

Dear star, that just happens

to be where you are in the universe

to keep us from ever-darkness,

to ease us with warm touching,

to hold us in the great hands of light—

good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day, in happiness, in kindness.

Quite a transformation for the scant miles and few minutes of just a little bit ago.

12.3.2025 – cups of coffee

three cups of coffee
warm brown and caffeine filled
starting the morning

He poured himself a cup of coffee, fumbling in the darkness, and sipped at it. Scalding hot, too hot to drink despite its long journey up from the wardroom. But the taste and the smell of it were sufficient to start his digestive processes working again. He longed for that coffee; he was accustomed to drinking eight big cups every day of his life and had always guiltily put aside the self-accusation that he was a coffee-hound dependent on a drug.

It was coffee; the inevitable set-up with the cream and sugar that he never used, but he viewed it as Galahad would have viewed the Holy Grail. Krause tugged off his gloves and snatched at it. His hands were numb and trembled a little as he poured: He swigged off the cup and refilled and drank again. The warmth as the coffee went down called his attention to the fact that he was cold; not acutely, perishingly, cold but chilled through and through as if nothing would ever quite warm him again.

Then a third cup of coffee, not swigged down madly like the first two, but drink more at leisure, savouring it like a true coffee-hound, with the added pleasure of knowing that there was a fourth cup yet to be drunk.

From The Good Shepard by CS Forester (Little, Brown: Boston, 1955).

A couple of days every week I work in the office which, for me, means getting up at 6 a.m. to try and get on the road to work around 6:45 a.m. and beat the traffic.

Goofy to say as I moved from Metro Atlanta with 10 million people to a seaside community with a scattered 100,000 people but we still have traffic problem and the problem is that almost everyone lives in one part of the county but works out on the coast island and we all go to work at the same time and there is only one bridge to the island.

Most days I get up at 7 a.m. and me and coffee and my morning reading of newspapers on my tablet have a comparatively leisurely start.

But when I am in the office, I get my clothes out the night before, I plan my lunch and I get the coffee ready.

Café Bustelo and the timer set for 5:45 a.m.

I wake up before the alarm and here the gurgling of the coffee maker and into the shower where I expect to have gallons of HOT FRESH WATER delivered to me at the touch of a hand – if that doesn’t set the USA off from 95% of the world … well, boy howdy!

Then out to the kitchen and my mug and the first sip.

The warmth as the coffee went down

I pour that fourth cup too.

As I get squared away, keys, sun glasses, back pack … I look at that fourth cup sitting on the counter.

I put aside the self-accusation that he was a coffee-hound dependent on a drug and know that I might get caught in traffic without access to a bathroom and I leave it there.

12.1.2025 – will bring you big things

will bring you big things
the colors of dawn-morning
beauty of rose leaves

A Wooing

I will bring you big things:
Colors of dawn-morning,
Beauty of rose leaves,
And a flaming love.

But you say
Those are not big things,
That only money counts.

Well,
Then I will bring you money.
But do not ask me
For the beauty of rose leaves,
Nor the colors of dawn-morning,
Nor a flaming love.

The collected poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes, , 1902-1967 (New York : Knopf, 1994)

11.20.2025 – telling myself, I

telling myself, I
was impressed, had to be some
impression in it

Impressions of Sunrise over Hilton Head, 11/20/2205

Impression I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it — and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! A preliminary drawing for a wallpaper pattern is more finished than this seascape.

Louis Leroy’s review of the painting, Impression, Sunrise, was printed in Le Charivari on 25 April 1874.

Claude Monet, *Impression, Sunrise* (1872)

According to Wikipedia, While the movement and the painting initially garnered controversy, Monet’s Impression, Sunrise gave rise to the name and recognition of the Impressionist movement, arguably exemplifying more than any other work or artist the Impressionist movement as a whole in style, subject, and influence.

Driving to work this morning I could see the sunrise.

I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it.

11.13.2025 – without wondering

without wondering
think about the sunrise and
what sunrise would bring

Adapted from the line, “He thought that he would lie down and think about nothing. Sometimes he could do this. Sometimes he could think about the stars without wondering about them and the ocean without problems and the sunrise without what it would bring.”

From the book, Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway, (Charles Scribner Sons: New York, 1970 – published posthumously).