Cardón Dawn

Before the sun has committed to anything, the sky over the gulf turns the color of the inside of a shell. The water takes two greens at once, jade where the bottom comes up close, ink where it falls away, and the cardón along the spine of the point stand in the half-dark like a congregation arrived early and content to wait. I walked out there in the dark to be standing on that rock when it happened. It happens every morning, to no one. An ordinary Tuesday on this coast, and the most beautiful room I have ever been let into.