Good Morning Day!

At first light, whether I was out on my morning walk or just to the road to get the paper, my first impulse was to greet the morning with a verbal salute, ”good morning day.” The light was just asserting itself, stirring the birds to their early, busy chirping and singing, colors beginning to grow strong, the time of a new beginning - a new day. Sometimes the addition of a late setting full moon would bring its additional brightness to view, prompting a special greeting to that large luminous rock in the sky.

For me, first light has always had some special magic about it, when as a young lookout on the bridge in the Navy or later in life when sailing overnight. From the end of the mid watch, 4 A.M. when everything is inky black, particularly when an overcast deprives the sky of star light, voices of people nearby seem disemboweled bodyless with little sense of direction. Then, with the earliest of gray light, outlines appear without much sense of depth and little definition. As the colors begin to assert themselves in turn, a wonderful transformation begins. Shapes assume dimension, distances resolve and the world becomes full, alive and three dimensional. It is morning.