Instantly awake and shocked tight, in the light’s smashed mountain, broken granite and gray air, my eyes gouged open, my body a fear in flesh; why snapped from sleep? No noise did it, not the light, not any dream in memory; why awake?

The sudden day slips into normal calm, the hours mass their usual ease, and noon and afternoon are gone, with all their small antitheses, and the slight drag of doubt, the snag that warps the river just a bit, ignore it. You may, perhaps, forget for good, unless, of course, some morning stabs your eyes, the gulfs and cliffs that drift by through our days.