New Morning

I went on a walk this morning just as dawn was brimming over the horizon. It's really on these walks that I totally realize what a disgusting area I live in. You can't escape the beer cans and mud and patchy grass. It makes me sad. I walked all the way from my apartment to the Krannert Center for Performing Arts because I knew that I could climb up to the roof there and all the buildings kept interfering with with my view of the sun. All I could see was a golden haze obscuring tree leaves. Campus was empty, only three or four people dotted the sidewalks and they walked with a purpose, most likely work. By the time I got to the roof of the Krannert, the sun was a huge blinding orb in the middle of the sky. I had missed it. I was still early and lovely, but the moment of it cooly arching itself over the tip of the treeline had passed. I suddenly realized that there was no way I would ever be able to make it by myself--walking alone when it is still dark that late holds danger on an abandoned campus, and I would have to start twenty minutes or so before dawn to witness it.

Perhaps I will find someone to go with me.


I picked two dandelions. When I smelled my hands after I went back to when I used to crush them when they were yellow into a paste while I was playing house. This was at Littlejohn Elementary, in the old rotting wooden playground equipment that they've since replaced with hard primary colored plastic.

Prairie

ii. She Knows

Brown waves of dirt lurch and toss; the farmers
plant crops in long, parallel trenches. Her curtains’
green vine blue paisley print winds, reminds
her of water and flood, which is where she treads
each morning when she sends loose a shimmering
pair of pigeons to roll and return by dusk, a descent
reminiscent of all these flown depths.

--Laura Koritz

I am a midwestern girl who grew up on flat fields and flat ground. I know the starkness of a bare tree alone on a field of dust and snow in midwinter. I know rusty chain link fences, the vastness of a frothing sky, and the slight dips of ditches before tall golden corn. I am grateful for this simplicity. Even when I move to Maine in six months I will be grateful for it. And in Maine I will be grateful for the indigo deep ocean, the jagged high rocks and the moments on the side of the road that pass by so quick you miss them if you're not paying attention.


I am grateful that I am able to find the sublime in these moments.