Outside our bedroom window the weeping cherry
and Bradford pear glow with auroral light;
morning has not yet broken, but soon the sun,
not just its curving light, will clear the horizon.
A myriad birds, whose songs I cannot recognize,
utterly indifferent to our desire to sleep past
sun’s rising and well into this spring morning, sing.
Even our early-to-rise children, knowing it Sunday,
sleep late, but this first-light lambency, these birdsongs,
they wake us from a slumber different than sleep
to a world alive, in bloom, in song, now green.

Jeremy Dae Paden was born in Italy and raised in Latin America. He teaches Spanish at Transylvania University .  Among his many achievements, he is published in Calíope, a critical journal of poetry of Spain and the Americas during the Renaissance and Baroque periods.  He is also a member of the Affrilachian Poets.  

It is an honor and a privilege for Esse Diem to post Professor Paden’s work.  April is National Poetry Month; click here to find out more about celebrating poetry and its vital place in American culture.

Image credit: E. Gaucher