It seems more common to measure in mornings than nights.

I realize conspicuous exceptions exist, from Twelfth Night to the highly particularized “Night Before Christmas.”

But nights seem to be viewed more diffusely, and collectively–“One of These Nights,” Arabian Nights, REM’s “Night Swimming,”  Maurice Sendak’s “In the Night Kitchen.” 

Mornings and days, on the other hand, are ticked off in increments.  Sometimes we even “count the time in quarter-tones to ten.”

Mary Oliver parcelled out A Thousand Mornings, as did Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in chronicling John F. Kennedy’s Presidential tenure.

You can read about one hundred days of countless subjects, from novel weight loss programs to meditations to military engagement in the Falklands and the final fraction of President Kennedy’s term and life.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez catalogued a full century of solitude.

Elie Weisel likely had something more profound in mind when he wrote the astonishing Night, given that in Genesis darkness preceded light: “the Earth was astonishingly empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep,” and only after bottomless darkness did “God separat[e] between the light and” night’s darkness. 

Perhaps it is just because it seems less surprising to reach nightfall once one has, for better or worse, begun to face another day.

To the grieving, each morning seems at least mildly improbable, even unsettling, after night’s non-linear tangle of time.  I awaken, therefore I am still here–even on the frequent mornings when my dreams have been occupied by someone who no longer opens his eyes to dawn.

Each morning is, to me, something like the way W.S. Merwin depicted the beginning of a new year:

With what stillness at last
you appear in the valley
your first sunlight reaching down
to touch the tips of a few
high leaves that do not stir
as though they had not noticed
and did not know you at all
then the voice of a dove calls
from far away in itself
to the hush of the morning

Still here to see the sunrise.  Still here to make my way through the day and toward inherently unsharable night.   And another day.

so this is the sound of you
here and now whether or not
anyone hears it this is
where we have come with our age
our knowledge such as it is
and our hopes such as they are
invisible before us
untouched and still possible