Welcome to “Dear Daybreak”, a new, occasional Daybreak column. It features short vignettes about life in the Upper Valley: an encounter, some wry exchange with a stranger or acquaintance… Anything that happened in this region or relates to it and strikes a contributor as interesting or funny or poignant—or that makes us appreciate living here. One request right now: No more poems for a few weeks, please—the larder’s full at the moment.

Dear Daybreak:

About 25 years ago, I was heading north on I 91 on my way to Hardwick, honing a sermon, searching, as always, for just the right words to express the inexpressible. First point by Thetford, second by Fairlee, and so on. Wanting to be understood, to make a difference.

Somewhere past Bradford, I was interrupted by a white horse trotting purposefully down the left side of my lane. Going where? It was a freezing cold morning, temperatures were below zero, and the horse was blanketed with frost, his breath steaming. How long could he go on like that? What to do? Whom to call and where? It was 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Miles passed.

Then, a crossing between the north and south lanes turned up. Why I turned in, I don’t know. A southbound pickup truck turned in at the same moment. We were side-by-side. Windows went down.

“Is he yours?” I said to the woman in the passenger seat. “No,” she said, “but we’re looking for him.” “He went that way,” I said, motioning south, and realizing I’d almost said, “thataway,” like somebody in an old cowboy movie.

Windows went up. We got back on the highway and picked up where we’d left off. They to their search, I to my sermon.

But later, I thought, “Thirteen plain words. That’s all it took to make a difference.” The sermon is long forgotten, but not the white horse, or the truck, or how the inexpressible was expressed in that interaction.

— Karen Sheldon, Hanover

Dear Daybreak:

Sailing

one round disc of light all alone on the shaded hammock a beacon calling, come! rest here and write a poem rock a rhythm, Sailing in shade the heavy heat of day falling but you are safe in your netted swaying ship pulling words out of the waves lilting onto the page

— Rose Loving, Tunbridge

Dear Daybreak:

When we moved into our little house in 1996, the treetops were level with the roofline, and the back deck was flooded with sunlight much of the day. As the trees grew, so did the shade. The house became noticeably cooler each year, and we enjoyed dappled shade on the deck. Today, the treetops soar above the house, sheltering us from increasingly hot summer temperatures.

However, each autumn when leaves start to fall, sunlight creeps back into the corners of rooms at different angles than in summer. Suddenly I notice a beam highlighting a corner of a chair, or splashing across the face of my daughter’s 6th grade plaster bust on the coffee table. Rays highlight my neglected dusting job of picture frames and glass candle holders. But they also bring a reminder of younger days, when every room was filled with light, and our little girl played on the sun-flooded rug. As days grow shorter and we have fewer years ahead of us than behind us, the return of the light is a sweet reminder of those wonderful summer days.

— Heidi Maurer, Lebanon