By 5 a.m., I’ve already lived a full day
Where the tears go, so shall I
original photo: “Dark Waters”, Tofino, B. C.
The heavens called at three. By the time I slipped into the hot tub, the world was still dark, holding its breath.
Above me, the night sky hummed with a thousand private conversations. Venus and Jupiter sat low in the east-northeast, leaning close as if whispering old secrets. Venus, bright and insistent, outshone her ancient suitor.
At twelve o’clock, the Pleiades glimmered, and to their lower right, Orion stood with open arms, ready to receive the Sisters’ wisdom and fuel his eternal hunt. Threading through this celestial gathering were the Perseid meteors, their luminous tails flashing into view every few breaths.
This is my morning prayer, a quiet invitation to stand in awe. Gratitude not just for being awake, but for being alive in this particular moment of time.
A time when challenge and beauty meet face-to-face. When hardship and heart greet each other without pretense. When sorrow waters the rivers that will one day reach the sea.
Last night, I dreamed about why the planet is mostly salt water, and why our own bodies echo its water-to-salt ratio. I woke knowing: the seas are born of grief as much as beauty.
They hold the salt of ancient horrors and the brine of love’s most overwhelming joys. They hold the tears of loss, war, hatred, and reunion. The oceans are the great archives of human and earthly feeling.
Kahlil Gibran once wrote, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” His words remind me that the same capacity that allows us to feel grief also allows us to hold joy.
Rainer Maria Rilke offered a companion truth: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” This is the promise and the responsibility of living, to remain open, to allow, to trust the tides.
Now, at 8 a.m., the watering of everything that matters is done. The young coyote has eaten. A hawk perches on the trough, sipping. Quail families sift the olive-tree duff. Hummingbirds and bees tend their early shift.
Three roadrunners patrol for snakes, poaching my beloved lizards. The life-death cycle is visible, unromantic, unavoidable.
Two days ago, I was driving to a friend’s art opening when I learned, halfway there, that he had died the day before. His art hung for all to see, but he was gone.
It made me wonder if maybe we are all just hanging our work on the wall for a moment, before streaking across the night sky like the Perseids, bright for an instant and then gone.
I look up from my coffee. The moon’s rim has slipped away, but Venus still holds her place, faint as the glance of a lover who knows the intimacy of what was just shared.
I trust my tears find their way to the sea. I trust I will see again the beauty, untamed, tender, constant.
Carl Jung wrote, “The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness.” Paying attention to these doors, to dreams, to symbols, to the night sky itself, allows us to live in conversation with what is infinite.
He also asked, “The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life. Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interests upon futilities and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance.”
Perhaps this is the quiet work of a lifetime, to keep our eyes on what endures, to measure our days not by the noise they hold but by the depth of connection they awaken, to live so that our actions ripple toward the eternal rather than scatter into the temporary.
Mary Oliver once wrote, “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” And so I will.
The sky at three a.m. will call again. The meteors will burn and vanish. Venus will lean close to Jupiter. The Pleiades will hold their quiet council. And I will slip into the dark water, listening for the conversations that began long before I arrived and will continue long after I am gone.
written by Bren Littleton
original photo: “Dark Waters”, Tofino, B. C.
Tin Flea Press c 2025