Let There Be Light
He sits alone
on the steps, a little boy,
guilty only of being human
and born, listening for a footstep
no longer lurching, for a tongue
no longer burning, for the
key to turn, for warmth
to reach out, but
only dark comes to answer, dark
that a thousand candles can’t pierce,
and while he waits he is weaving
a house to hold him, a house woven
of sticks and stones, words
born in bone.
Oh let there be light.
She stands alone
in the night, a woman,
hands on her throat, voice
once vibrant now silent, lanced
by hands feigning love, words
piercing steel-edged
where angels fear to tread,
her hand
hides the scars with a smile
song fallen at her feet, a
thousand cuts too small to see
but one wound too many
will empty sacred wells
eventually.
Oh let there be light.
And there was light.
Not that glow we call light,
heaven-descending, healing
and rescuing in fantasy endings,
no not that light, but light
holding hands with darkness,
story-light limping from lips
all too human, from pages of
tree-skin, light
brushed onto canvas, ink
of tears, paint of blood, light
transforming in lyric and chord,
light wrung from the earth
in hands who have been here
before.
In the silence,
in the void, a voice
touches the dark waters.
And there is light.
