B.B. Boudreau

Novelist | Singer

Dawn on Rockport Road

350

Sunrise Somewhere

Dawn. The renewal of the earth – every day. A chill in the air draws jackets tighter. A symphony echoes through the neighborhood. Without the disruption of people noise, ocean waves that have finally found the shore sigh with rhythmic breath just down the way. Dawn is absent people noise, and nature takes the stage. A car passes and intrudes indelicately on our front-porch peace. The paper arrives. When did paperboy end and paperman begin?

I mean to arise every morning for this time, but sloth often foils my attempts, and I choose warm sleep alongside my best friend. It almost got me today, but dawn came begging, and now that the coffee is beside me, I celebrate. How can I daily miss this magic? Promises are made for future dawn patrol. We will see.

I hungrily absorb the moment. Soon the people noise will take over, beginning with the distant road. When humans awake, they are loud. Cars zoom by, music accosts us from far-off car stereos, mowers, weed whackers, machines of every kind intrude on the subtle song of nature, and we are off to the races in our frantic attempt to make – money? Undoubtedly that is what we are doing. Someone at some point decided that it takes 8 hours for 5 days to call it a “job.” Almost everyone reports at the same time. So, in about two hours, I will join the cluster of noisy humanoids, each alone in separate cars, burning fuel, burning tempers, burning time as they race to another location to do a job in exchange for money. They will pay their mortgage, their utilities, their therapist, the supermarket and finally once a year, the hotelier. They reserve one week or so to come here to the end of Rockport Road, where every day they drag their chairs and towels to the beach, get miserably sunburned, drink margaritas and daiquiris and call it “vacation.” I know them. They were at the beach yesterday and the day before. They were sitting in their beach chairs, punching Smart phones and tablets, telling the electronic world about their escape from daily life, surrounded by hundreds of others doing precisely the same thing. Some kids were actually playing. Whew.

But right now, they are absent for the miracle. The heat that will drive them into icy ocean water in a few hours is not yet upon us, and I long for a sweater, though it is July. A slight breeze is enough to hunch my shoulders.

The dog licks her paws beside me. She enjoys dawn. Every few minutes, she lifts her head and perks her ears to a distant sound, but only human sound causes this reaction. Curled into a ball, ears on alert, she shifts her weight and listens for the next intrusion into our dawn. The sky lightens with the rise of the sun, and doves mourn the passing of this moment. One car and now two pass. It is the beginning of the human race to make money. Ah, so that is why it is called a race. Soon my coffee will be gone and I will reluctantly join the fray. But for now, I rejoice at the daily renewal of life as it was meant to be lived, one quiet moment at a time.

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