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The Quality of Light
I have always loved the various kinds of light that trickle through my day (when I’m observant). This poem is my attempt to dwell more fully in that experience of the almost-personal quality by which light sets mood, offers perspective, and speaks of the Creator.
In each case – the mother, the nurse, the queen – Light is feminine to me. Perhaps because she is so much the unseen context in which I live – vital, but easy to ignore. The three stanzas also convey a sense of the way we move from childhood (“emerging from the night”), in which we barely see the world, into adulthood, in which we may see all-too clearly and ‘objectively’. It suggests a further development into a triumphant, hopeful sort of grown-up-ness in which we see the world bathed again in its primal glory, as our time moves “toward the night’s cool rest”.
Here is a nod also to Gerard Manley Hopkins’ sense that God’s grandeur “will flame out”. The final image is comforting and suggestive, again, of the Holy Spirit’s and Mary’s movement back toward supplicants from beyond this world, where our true destiny lies.
The Quality of Light
Thin morning light
that tickles, teases me awake
Gray Yellow Gentle
Feather-light
A mother’s hovering breath
Objects in its embrace
Caressed Still Colorless
Emerging from the night.
Mid-morning light
Clean Advantageous Clear
Crisp Starched White Uniform
Sufficient and no more
Pragmatic Dutiful and Sure
Objects in its no-nonsense gaze
Resolved Hard-edged and Real.
Late afternoon
Light triumphs from her throne
Red-purple Robed, Aloof
Stooping to bathe the supplicant,
subject world in flame
Arched toward the night’s cool rest
Superabundant Radiant Warm and Blessed.
All the poems are now in one volume, and I’d love for you to have a copy! Click on the cover to buy it, and click here for the recordings of all the poems.
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