The early morning poem

I'm an early riser, always have been. When I was working I lived at some distance from Edinburgh, so I had to drive from Mid Calder to King's Buildings or later The Botanics. After we moved to Dunbar I joined the ranks of rail commuters, shivering on the platform at Dunbar Station to wait for the 7.40 am train.

I didn't mind getting up at 6:15; the house was quiet, and I had my routine, a shower, coffee, making up my sandwiches for lunch, then leaving home, usually before the family woke up. From autumn to spring it meant I left and returned in darkness. And I found that I got up early even at weekends. Since retirement in 2002 I still get up early, maybe around 7am. It has its compensations though, seeing dawns, hearing birdsong and the sounds of towns waking up. Here's a poem from those working days - I wrote it in 1993, and it was published in my first collection, Thirteen Ways of Looking At the Highlands (Diehard, 1996):

Opening gambit


Dawn's the finest time there is.
I can't fault it; clear or clouded,
it's somehow always novel,
watching skies open towards a sunrise
behind the hills, or pinkening
the city's castle- and spire-lines.
Heaven knows I've seen enough of them,
but there's always the hope
of life becoming brighter
in the hour of the world's lightening.

Copyright  © Colin Will 1996, 2015