Mornings

Nighttime melds, melts, transforms into morning. I love it. We are swimming now before 5:00 a.m. It is dark. It is very dark.

Some kind of strange birds circle the sky above us. I don't know what they are. One would think bats, but they don't look like bats, and they don't fly like bats. They look the color of a dove and fly like one. After thirty minutes or so of them getting closer and closer, it gets kind of spooky.

The first hint of daylight is when I am on the north end of the pool and breathe to the east looking up Barton Street. The first sign is it looks like someone turned on a streetlight on a side street. There is just a hint that the sky is light there, up that street.

After a few more laps, I can suddenly see the outline of the trees east of me when I am on the south end of the pool. A few more laps and the western sky above the Twin Rivers building looks a little lighter. As soon as it is light enough to see clouds in the sky, the mysterious birds disappear.

I stop on the north wall to pull some paddles out of my swim bag. Now it is light enough to see marlins fly over. I notice the sparrows at the edge of the water where you walk into the pool. Always there is a flotilla of dead bugs there washing up against the concrete like dead soldiers on the beaches of Normandy during World War II. Twin Rivers sparrows are fat.

I hear a dove cooing in the distance. I think of a Bible verse, "He maketh the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice" (Paslm 65:8 KJV). 

Thank you, Jesus.