Poetry: A Day is Made of Hours…

A day is made of hours
and of multiple lights.
Of joys. Of storms.
Of small passions.
And the ambit of its white essence
keeps on unfolding until
that hushed field of shadows where
peacefulness resides.

And so it is our cup overflows its minutes
with a precision of page sketched
by invisible illustrators;
with an exquisite, surprising quality,
like that of the crystal of quartz,
or the wellspring’s open eye.

And on this path of points,
on this geometry
of the chronometer,
we go, hallucinated,
fervid, somnambulant,
passing, from crime into miracle
and from voice into silence,
through rare seasons
that not many recognize, not many,
and not many comprehend.

Daybreak, for example.

It is not only a bird singing,
piercing, shelling the essence
of the air.
It is not just a delightful
coolness, or the green pasture,
or the runaway dew.
But also our souls that arise,
if there is a soul
and if there is a dawn,
with a nugget of joy and
a chunk of danger underarm.

It is not only the tree,
bored of standing against
the unchanging horizon.
Or just the soft murmurs
of water, of wind,
of corollas opening.
But also our souls that arise,
if there is a soul
and if there is a dawn,
with the large window
of amazement open
and a curiosity
of pre-pubertal dream.

Something begins,
someone screams,
something or someone
savors arising life again.

And this is daybreak, today.
One season. One of many.
One.

The clocks come rolling later
and you with them and with me,
almost certain that everything
is real, even ourselves.

The light opens our eye’s chalice.
Our eye suffers. It surrenders
its wounds to the seven capital
colors and to the sharp edge of the line.

And in that elementary pain,
in that rutilant violation,
a universe emerges
beyond our world
and a living soul deeper
within our living souls.

Be this initial word, then,
this utterance of love,
a praise to the light early-riser,
from which our universe is born,
brilliant, new,
full-filled with gems
and with mysteries.


Ernesto Vasquez, MD
March 2010