Daily post: The leaden hour

DAILY PROMPT: THE GOLDEN HOUR
6:00AM: the best hour of the day, or too close to your 3:00AM bedtime?

6:00am is not civilised.

Yes, I realise that objectively, it offers a lot: the pristine promise of an apricot sky lighting the morning dew: a cool, kind kiss before the scorch of a summer’s day: the sharp, clean tang of early autumn.

But emotional memory has a way of cracking the crust of reason…

The six o’clock bell that dragged a homesick child from the oblivion of sleep to iron beds in a roomful of strangers and the agony of sharing comfortless, lead-floored bathrooms: the same bell sullen with frost, summoning us to run morning laps when the grass crunched under our feet, and later, chilblains thawed and burned as we ate our lumpy porridge…

The wail of a hungry baby when leaden limbs threaten to shatter a body hollowed out by exhaustion…

The blustering lash of freezing rain that turned umbrellas ribs-out on an overhead walkway to bleak railway platforms, where misery huddled in groups or stood in stoic solitude bracing itself for the long morning commute.

These days, I see it once a year: Boxing Day, when I’m well on the long road home, glassy-eyed and hyper-alert, running on the adrenalin of 21 high-octane communicators at a Christmas Dinner loved and gone. Desperate to the beat the tail-gating city drivers who will clog country roads in their dash to squeeze extra seconds from summer holidays.

I am not a morning person unless I see it from the other side: 3:00am from my kitchen window, when the little town is still and silent except for the rhythmic hush of the waves…

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/10/27/daily-prompt-dawn/

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