How the light is sad.
How it will not leave us alone.
How we are tugged up staircases
by the way it angles across landings.
April by Jan Zwicky
How light cannot exist
without darkness.
How the absence of one
makes the other unimaginable.
How the path out of night's dark womb
comes from knowledge we've always had,
from fingers searching the ancient braille
of the rib cage.
How the reasons for this are myriad.
How the light is sad
because we are.
How our memory of light
is unique and sacred,
How light pulls us towards
our unforgetting
of things we've known.
How it ignites a longing
we can't define
as it drags us over field and stone.
How it will not leave us alone
even when we want it to.
How night captures light
by stealth.
How in the black and blue half-light
our skin becomes transparent,
and ghostly x-ray captures our faces,
exposes what lies beneath.
How a sliver of light under a door
Can send us scrambling for its final traces.
How we are tugged up staircases
as we attempt to postpone
a return to night.
How darkness vibrates with expectancy,
with a frisson of danger,
ache of excitement
for hidden longings.
How moonlight is there
to reassure us of dark's impermanence,
banishing all misunderstandings
by the way it angles across landings.
