Yes, this is the second time you’ve seen this picture in my blog. It was posted with a poem, Daybreak, in late August and now it reappears to accompany a second poem it also inspired, Daybreak II. A single picture on paper, on the screen or in the memory has a powerful, persuasive control of our imagination. This beautiful photo by my friend and photographer, Yolanda Litton, has done just that.

Early Morning at Bagnegrole (Photograph by Yolanda Litton)

I’ve included an audio clip of me reading the poem. Click on the link below and wait a few seconds.

Daybreak  (2)

Waking up in at daybreak in the south of France
Is as if I were stepping into someone else’s life.

So far from my own home, this wistful morning fog
Rises slowly to reveal a house of soft honeyed stone.

The slope of a sharply pitched roof holds a tall chimney
Where the swifts are now resting after a long evening hunt.

Somewhere a rooster crows with the energy that only
The young can bring to a new day. Out of nowhere,

A soft gray cat tip-toes by, looks up at me and blinks
Its eyes in that inscrutable feline way and disappears.

I stand here leaning on the windowsill, wondering
What my life would be like had I been born here.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee wafts up from
The kitchen below. One lone church bell rings

Calling its faithful to prayer. But nature’s beauty
Is my religion, my serenity, my salvation, my Eden.