Every morning when I was a girl
my mother would wake me
with song, the same lilting lyric
every dawn,
It’s going to be such a lovely day,
good morning, good morning I say.
It sounds too grand
to call it ceremony,
and she would have appeared
an unlikely celebrant
in her bathrobe and slippers,
but she infused
this daily ritual with prayer
and to this day I wake
certain that the world
will have beauty in it
and certain that I will find it—
this the most beautiful gift
any mother could give.