Amid the monkish and toe-stubbing hours
I test the canonical word
for how it upends the breath.
I twirl the numbers three,
seven, twelve, and forty
because the romance of dawn
is just getting started.
I grind through the charley horse
of calf and the rusted, dangling
hinge of an athlete’s knee,
open the front door to cold air
in its precise instruction. I lace up a pair
of new hiking boots, and head for an older,
forgotten road, breaking them in
alongside the sun’s morning rays.
In reaching the base of a mountain,
I lift the silence as it cycles back
once more and then return
to the first thought, the word,
because the mind is purest
in the darkest part of the day.
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For the past two decades, Mark D. Bennion has worked with students at Brigham Young University-Idaho. His poems have appeared in Aethlon, Dappled Things, The Lyric, San Pedro River Review, U.S. Catholic, and other journals. His most recent collection is Ambrosia: Love Poems. Most recently, he’s learning to find his inner gardener and construction worker as he assists his wife with projects around the house..
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