Dawn on the Summit
Three tanka

Dawn on the summit.
Over the horizon light steals night's stars,
makes the sky luminous.
A blue glow expands to infinity
and sunrise creeps closer.

Daylight emerges,
defines mountains in peach shimmer.
A morning walk -
a laughing companion, the energy
of dogs on tree lined path.

Then a volcano
of pure sunlight erupts -
radiance and deep shadows.
The calm of dawn has given way
to challenges unknown.

by Betty McCauley

"I'm a retired Environmental Protection Agency librarian with an abiding love of words, language, poems, and stories. I teach a class in Write Your Life Stories, which keeps me remembering moments in the past. I've written poems, good or not, since before I was a young Camp Fire Girl. The national Camp Fire office sponsored an annual poetry contest in I which I won a second, a third, and finally a first prize. One year the well known singer Kate Smith read my poem 'Dear Diary' on the radio. It is about a fictional brother who was missing in action in World War II. I had fan mail from soldiers' families across the country. That is the last time I was famous. I now get my joy from writing poems for my friends, three children, and four grandchildren, who also love words. With family encouragement and their photographs, I have recently published a book of haiku called My Spirit Sings. I hope you'll join the chorus."

Betty McCauley
3-1-10