Morning Ritual

A steady rain was falling, grasses greening beneath a smear of grey. 

Janie shadowed me as I took up a lighter and lit wicks on bookshelves and coffee tables, filling the house with a cozy glow. Then we both settled in the living room and waited for the water I'd set on the stovetop to boil, her tail an inconstant beat on the floor that quickened if I looked her way, accelerated when I addressed her, and died out whenever my attention drifted. 

My canine lady in waiting trailed me into the kitchen after the water had boiled and watched me pour coffee beans into the grinder (cowering as I reduced them to grounds in the noisy machine) and tap them into the French press.  I carefully poured steaming water over the grounds and stirred the mixture till it bloomed rich and foamy, then set it aside to steep. 

I stared out the kitchen window at the fat squirrels plundering Oma's birdfeeders and waited.  Meanwhile, Janie was sniffing the garbage closet, her tail wagging at least as enthusiastically as it had in response to my most affectionate tones--an observation guaranteed to keep me humble.

Four minutes later I returned to the counter. Janie padded across the kitchen to me and leaned her warm weight against my legs while I stood there and pressed down the plunger with my palm.

I poured myself that simple, essential thing: a cup of coffee. 

A steady rain was falling, grasses greening beneath a smear of grey, while I drank it lazily in the living room.

It’s a flirtatious March day.  The sunshine winks at me from the windshields of passing cars, and the wind is toying with my curls, and here I sit at a sticky outdoor table with my laptop and my coffee mug.  I should be working.  I should be clearing the backyard of a winter’s worth of dog poop, or purging my closets and drawers of wool and flannel, or at the very least gathering some of those blooming daffodils for the pitcher on my bookshelf.  Instead I am googling everything from “poems about spring” to “how to start a garden,” and inundating my system with cup after cup of the most ordinary Maxwell House brew.  

I will not argue that I could have used the free bright hours of this afternoon much more productively.  Even so, I do not consider them wasted or misspent.  I claimed them, in my own small way.  I have found some good poems.  I have seeded my heart with Edenic aspirations that I hope to one day realize in the sunshine and soil of my future. 

And now remains to me the long-lit length of early evening, to do the tasks I’ve been postponing. 



Change takes real intentionality, like a woman bent over her garden beds every day with a spade and the determined will to grow up something good.  -Ann Voskamp

"And those little captains, the chickadees, swift to the feeder and swift away..." -Robert Hass

March morning

Janie is relishing the sunlight this morning.  It patterns the floorboards of the living room in bright squares that slant kitchen-ward.  She nuzzles up to the largest pool of light, tail twirling, and turns a series of tight circles.  Then she falls belly-up in a furry crescent against the light's sharp angles, her tail describing a diminishing arc across the gloss of the upper righthand corner. 

I love watching this early morning geometry from my corner in the kitchen, my fingers curled around a mug of coffee and my toes toasting in the warmth that whispers up from the register on the floor.  It is March with a vengeance outside, tangling the windchimes in the yard and snapping the flag across the street.  Inside, however, it is still and shining, and the heat purrs and the coffee steams and Janie's paws twitch while she dreams. 

I have been spinning to-do lists in my brain as I've sat here basking, and suppose that now it is time to do them.  Just one more mug of coffee, and I'll begin.  Cross my shining heart.