Good Morning, Readers

I'm up before the sun comes over the Pusch Ridge, startled by the sudden brightness as the first light hits the window in the library.

I'm thinking of you, denizens, and wondering how your day has started, wondering what I can tell you about mine.

Billy Collins says it better than I ever could so please, enjoy the words of my favorite poet describing exactly how I feel about you all right now:

A Portrait of the Reader with a Bowl of Cereal

Every morning I sit across from you
at the same small table,
the sun all over the breakfast things—
curve of a blue-and-white pitcher,
a dish of berries—
me in a sweatshirt or robe,
you invisible.

Most days, we are suspended
over a deep pool of silence.
I stare straight through you
or look out the window at the garden,
the powerful sky,
a cloud passing behind a tree.

There is no need to pass the toast,
the pot of jam,
or pour you a cup of tea,
and I can hide behind the paper,
rotate in its drum of calamitous news.

But some days I may notice
a little door swinging open
in the morning air,
and maybe the tea leaves
of some dream will be stuck
to the china slope of the hour—

then I will lean forward,
elbows on the table,
with something to tell you,
and you will look up, as always,
your spoon dripping milk, ready to listen.

-Billy Collins (Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001-2003)