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This is the first of my fortnightly poems for 2025. I intend to continue in like manner, with the odd extra posting. Thank you to all my readers, subscribers, followers and commentators. Your input is much appreciated.
Some people wake at first Light others remain asleep a while longer still others only wake up with an alarm some switch off the alarm and fall asleep again considerable numbers sleep right through the alarm – how will they ever be awakened?
(© Joshua F.D Bond)
Great poetry Josh! There’s so much here said beyond the words. I love the commentary in this thread as well. It’s a question we’ve been all living into whether we’re conscious of it or not. Like Shelly somehow I don’t need to set an alarm any longer. I always wake up about the same time and on the few occasions, I do set the alarm, I seem to wake up just ahead of it. Like Perry I am up before the light and welcome it as a ritual. Poetry finds me there, and never leaves me where she found me. Maybe somehow “I Am” watching it all from a different vantage point- a Being aware of Being? Once awakened can we ever go back?
I love this poem, Joshua. For me, it reclaims the importance of “awakening” that has been denigrated by gaslighting against “wokeness.” Your poem also sits in such good company with the poem “A Ritual To Read To Each Other” by William Stafford:
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“For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe— should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
These days I rarely set an alarm because my hungry cats demand that I wake up to feed them. When I do set the alarm for an early appointment, I often wake a few minutes before it goes off. I like to think that’s proof of the soul, or maybe angels, keeping an eye on the clock, so to speak, to bring me back from beyond. Do you know David Whyte’s poem, What to Remember on Waking?