Morning Weather

Most mornings begin gray.
Not the sky, the spirit.
I wake with a forecast already written,
doom and drizzle, chance of thunder.
Coffee helps me stand, not sing.

By midmorning I forget to feel.
Work arrives like a metronome.
Inbox, task, call, document, repeat.
Not sad, not joyful, just moving.
A useful silence settles and the hours click.

Early afternoon, something opens.
The mind lifts its head,
the body finds a gear,
and I start believing again.
Problems look like puzzles, not walls.
I picture the hard goals falling in order,
as if the day were a court I once owned.
For a while I am fluent in courage.

Evening keeps the hope but drains the charge.
I make promises to the night.
Tomorrow I will rise like a runner at the line,
breath ready, shoulders loose, eyes up.
Then morning comes, and the old weather returns.
Gray again. The cycle repeats.

I wish to wake bright from the first minute,
light at the window and light in the chest,
less static in the wires, less dread in the room.
I wish to start the day already singing.

Until then, I will keep a practice.
I will place one honest task in front of the next.
I will keep a small prayer near the coffee.
I will trust the noon that keeps returning,
and borrow strength from afternoons that remember me.
If joy arrives late, I will still open the door.
One morning, maybe soon, it will knock first.