Just a simple girl with a simple heart Trying to hold the pieces of the morning together So that they do not fall apart.
The way the ocher light filters through The bare limbs of early spring And casts a faint glow upon the hardwood floor Where my cat curls into herself and sleeps And the steam lifts from my coffee cup And the distant highway purrs.
Ridges thick with pines line the horizon And somewhere a northern train trundles the endless tracks, Sings into the wide, Dakota sky And calls the dwindling stars out to die against the light of dawn.
I hold my own Here in this western valley where these reckless dreams are reborn, Laptop open, words upon the page, Three little children not yet awake.
Will I keep them safe
If I speak these truths into the emergence of the sun,