On the Predawn, a Passage -- by Alex Ranieri

Invariably these days, I wake up a little before the first crack of dawn. Uneasily I toss myself this way, and turn myself another; too asleep to get up, and too awake to dream. The spectre of winter insomnia haunts me—that sealed-up solitude, pitch dark and pitch-starved, too, to the ear—for the windows all are tightly shut, and no bird sings to distinguish night from morning.

I try to trick myself back into sleep, but it’s no use. I am as fretful as the little boy in Proust, and I, too, will be unable to sleep, til the spectre of what I most desire enters the room.

The cardinal! At last, herald of the dawn, he sings! Although he sings alone, and all uncertain, afraid of being too early—even so, the tight-wound peg of my anxiety begins to turn. He may be uncertain—I am no longer—the morning will come—the chrysalis of night cannot endure forever.