Morning (repeat)

By Michelle Webster-Hein

When my infant daughter wakes at two in the morning and her father cannot coax her back to sleep, she and I curl up on the mattress in the guest room below the big window, and I drift off with her tiny fingers gripping my thumb.

At dawn she sits up and stares out at the world so long and so hard that I start to wonder if she’s watching a cat, perhaps, or a deer. But I look, and it is just the morning--new again, and worthy of attention.