In the liminal space between summer and fall, in the margin between darkness and dawn, I like to get up and go to the open window.  The night crickets and frog sounds are combined with the early bird sounds.  The air has a bit of cool damp attached to it.  The traffic is still.  I imagine all the drivers asleep.

Sometimes in that space I will go out to the hammock on the porch.  I think there must be something like womb memory that overtakes me in the hammock because once in it, I immediately fall into a thick and healing sleep.

Some mornings, waking up early, closer to fall,  I open the windows and the air that enters the house has a bit of chill to it– mountain stream chill.  This time it’s  just past the full moon.  Last night the moon rose late, and was the color of a persimmon.  Getting up, there were forty shades of darkness in the landscape, but my attention was grabbed by the white distorted disks  of flowers on the Rose of Sharon, floating like apparitions in the darkness.

I took the time to name the colors around the shrub.  The distant trees were black, the land black-yellow-green, the near trees black-turquoise.  To make sure I seized that moment, without turning on any lights, I climbed into a hot bath in the dark and watched the light change toward dawn, sitting there.

Looking through some old drawings in my journal the other day I came across a little sketch I did after sleeping on the sugar beach of a five acre atoll in the Caribbean.  Full moon.  Huge palms casting deep shadows.  Bright sand.  I wrapped myself in a white sheet which the wind played with like a sail, like the distorted disks of the Rose of Sharon, dancing in the darkness.