Sliver and orb, flash and streak,

rising and flowing across the earth

the quality of light is migratory,

transitional, dynamic as it pervades

our lives like breath, like heartbeats.

Omnipresent as every human need

and rife with potency, nobler than imagined

it spills over rotund or knife-sharp horizons,

an unstoppable beam inside thickets of dark.

It arrives as torn lace aflutter among branches,

shifts and skips between arms and legs

and rides manes of wild horses,

flicks ears of wolves and sleek-backed snakes

as sunlight ’til moonlight ’til starlight joins life to the finish.

The body cannot keep it from coming, nor forget

even in grief, even in blindness.

Light lays itself down, follows us faithfully

then embroiders worn edges of shadow.

Such volume of light in cup, in heart, in hand

has no form to define as it sizzles and dances

but here comes warmth and illumination

that arise from the deep of all mother-father eyes–

but, too, rests itself on mossy log and feathery bloom.

It roams alleys and walls of the city when few are watching.

Suffuses even the cave and recess no one wants to find.

It wends its way to tenderness of lovers’ fingertips,

and skin how it glows, it gleams in pulse of stars,

shimmer of moon and sun let in by window or fissure.

The earth, air, water know such wiles, how magic accumulates,

what means a spot of luminescence at play on brook, leaf, stone.

It changes what is seen, becomes a compass for a map of movements,

a truth telling, a magnification of vagaries of life.

This force is a constancy of inarguable beauty,

a mystery and surprise in the midst of aching and

creating, and in our welcomes, our refusals.

Seeking or not, there is always lux in tenebris—

born in homes of the cosmos, released to earth

and still working, undeterred by tremulous times.

May we be bearers of such light,

and brave bearers of life.

(Apologies for accidentally posting two Spotify.)