Predawn

By Laurie Klein

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Dear night-shifters, we robins
get it. And yet . . . we exult:
we get rowdy as dawn silhouettes
emerge, by degrees—evergreens,
silos and spires, high-rise towers
eclipsing cutouts of brightening
sky. We are your soundtrack. Maybe
you’re counting down minutes;
perhaps you yawn as you dress, accepting
again, daybreak’s pilgrimage, seemingly
unsung, complete with lanyard and badge.
Guten tag, keen-eyed hunters, and fishers,
baiting your hooks; G’day, human anchors
rehearsing the news. People of prayer
and praise: we relate! Bongiorno, officers
heeding the call, in the name of the siren.
Dear drivers and EMTS, un-applauded,
we also refuel, repair, deliver. Yo, truckers,
and dolers of donuts; Ho, fry cooks firing up
short-order altars. Dairy folk, too, and
nursing mothers: Bonjour. Shelf stockers, janitors,
medical peeps—who provision and clean and
cure—keep making your rounds, while
priests of the ether and thumb scrollers
commandeer coffeeshop tables, checking​
the social pulse. Call on us now, by nature
improbable angels keeping time,
as we call on you: cousins of rapture,
keeping the faith, Hola. Alo. Hello.

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Laurie Klein is the author of Where the Sky Opens and Bodies of Water, Bodies of Flesh. A grateful recipient of the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred, she lives in the Pacific Northwest and blogs, monthly, at lauriekleinscribe.com. 

Laurie's other work on Foreshadow:
Private, as the Small of a Back (Poetry, October 2023)