A slow waking backyard, a city street abandoned before dawn of all its revelers, laborers, and commuters — the emptiness is motivational, inspiring, refreshing as baptismal waters. I covet the hope of such stillness returning to me daily.

True creativity was a mystery to me until the opportunity arose to sit in utter silence. A Saturday moments after sunrise, surrounded by lush new greenery I’d come to tame but something deep in my writer’s soul stirred. So, I abandoned yard tools for a pen and paper and lay down in the overgrown grass until the quiet gave me words.

That day when early errands pressured me into the car while sleep still lay warm on my back. Returning home, a traffic light caught me without companion or neighboring errand runner, or passersby. I had the wherewithal to capture the moment, the gloomy clouds gliding over without a sound. A breeze never stirred. I turned off the car and found a scrap of paper to write: Remember this.

Remember this in the drum beat of rush hour traffic. In the midst of clutching pain while the ambulance screams. In the shadows of a bad dream where too many voices clamor and the walls can’t stop creaking. Remember the sensation of quiet sinking into the skin, slowing the heartbeat, stopping the questions.

Remember the quiet mornings. More will come.