I love shiny surfaces that reflect light.

As I sit facing the window at my dawn desk and ponder, elbows on desktop, chin on hands, the sewing machine is still out from making my daughter’s magazine.

The sewing machine’s plastic body catches my eye: it gives back an upside-down bare crisscross of branches, reflected from the dogwood tree outside.

The day we assembled the desk—really a kitchen island—in the newly finished space

The desktop is made of quartzite. It is really a free-standing kitchen island—months of searching for a desk then all at once, buying a floor model at West Elm’s Fenway store; a quick browse after the 2018 Red Sox World Series victory parade.

The shiny quartzite stone is a pleasure to clear of books, pens, debris of projects: brush off, then deep clean, especially at the end when I dry it to an even shine—smear- and dust- and coffee ring-free.

Then, the sky is doubled and light bounces to the high ceiling and off and through the clear pendant lights, three of them, suspended above the desk.

The tree outside is also doubled, and the two mourning doves who nest there become four, prior even to raising their eggs.

I try to put back just the essentials but of course, things accumulate with use and the desk needs a frequent reset. Getting back the reflection is good motivation.

Remington Portable #2 on a clean desktop - A surprise, I hadn’t reckoned with the play of light and reflection, nor how cold it would be at dawn in winter

There are seven windows in my studio that open up the world to me, north and east, and sideways sunlight and the clear morning come in and illuminate typewriter keys and shine clear through open petals. Even shriveled petals take on fresh hues of beauty in the early morning light.

The cold snaps and crackles in this unheated space, this enclosed porch—borrowed-from-the-entrance—studio space. I like the room best in winter; they are in sync together, season and room. Metal stool, stone table, bare floor, all are hungry for my warmth when I arrive, dawn-bleary. This space wakes up my senses.

I light a candle or two then plug in the small, finned black heater that pumps oil and pops and gurgles as it begins to warm. The sun peers through and lends its help. The house at my back sends its warmth through the open door. And insulated walls, floor, ceiling, and the good windows do their best to keep winter outside.

The flickering candle flame reflected in the desk, the curling steam of coffee, the glinting sun that winks and nods—all say that warmth will come and win.

During the day

Everyone in my family comes through this space: it is the entrance to our house.

Adult son returning from a run to the pond, gap year son returning from work in the bakery, husband home from an errand carrying bags through and through again, often when I’m on Zoom. I also meet my daughter out here for a chat about her school day before we go our separate ways to work for a few hours. We start the day with poems, discuss her latest history lesson, and how she will need help later on with perhaps Latin or science lab.

It is not altogether convenient, this open throughway—but I am not lonely, can keep tabs on everyone, a part of the flow of the family as I work.

And I keep an eye on the neighborhood from my tall stool, a view up and down the well-walked city street. Dog walkers pass purposefully, plastic bag ready, heading for the Arboretum; and sometimes Dave the Clown, practicing on his unicycle, catches my attention as he pedals home from shopping, the wrong way down the street, a Target bag in each hand. It is always interesting.

The many city bus lines, just a block away, call out their stops, and the sound carries over the houses and through the backyards and I hear their brakes hiss and depart. Sometimes news copters relentlessly gather, and sirens blare a few blocks away: there’s a nearby fire or crash.

But also, nature

In January the red-tailed hawk screes and calls as it wheels, winter hungry, over the neighborhood. If I’m up really early and lucky, the great horned owl might glide silently home. Or if I’m out here very late, I might hear the coyotes gather beyond the train tracks to bicker and howl in their February mating season and send a chill through the blood.

In February the mourning doves arrive, always in the two days around Valentine’s Day, and I might hear them give that first magical coo, coo, coooo, as I did this year, from within the body of a snowstorm.

In March, song sparrows begin to trill the most liquid sound from their brown speckled bodies, in the bare bushes outside my window. And now the raccoons have woken from their winter to rumble the trash cans at dawn and feast.

But in the depths of winter, all is crackling-still at dawn. Nothing moves but your breath. No one comes and goes through the front door, and I nurse my coffee and look—feel the chill begin to fill with warmth, watch the shadows stretch and dawn ease into day.

Come and rest awhile and look.

Winter outside, spring within; flowers last for weeks out here, in the cold room

Click any image to see full-sized.

Double dogwood tree, nesting place of mourning doves

Reflections and shadows, an appreciated space esp at dawn. On the desk: Olympia SM8 typewriter

No more a night owl

I used to be a night owl until I was gifted this space.

It enticed me up earlier and earlier with its clear-eyed solitude, the invitation of reflections and quietly moving shadows.

Also, there were decades of cramped rented space in the city, with a family of six kids—perhaps for me a chair and a basket of books, art tools set aside for some time to play—and mostly, it turned out, at night, after hours.

So, this space is all the more gratefully received every day, every dawn.