These candles alit
outside on this fall
night usurp the sun for a time.
This trinity of soft
light plays well on my
eyes, weary of too
much clarity, too
much certainty, too
much of that kind
of faith that is
finally aloof.
These three wick a joy from
deep in heaven; a joy
hovering above the
window of my soul.
This, this lumen
settles me and I am
happy for this time
of grace, when the
aureole rays of these
three kings stay my
anxious heart
and illumine
You.
Is there a light
as lovely as a
candle’s? She
makes art
of the wall:
deftly balancing
light and shade
aptly drawing
my eye in, then out
graciously holding
the centre
while caressing
the contours of this space.
She transfixes me, this candle.
She sets me in the room, just so,
and her glow mirrors
Yours – Word Aflame – Word
seen and heard as You
divine me, define me
draw me in, enthrall me.
I sit in the splendor of this
candle, in the lure
of shadows settling me.
No fire can replace You –
Warmth
Light
Glow.
But still I enjoy
fireplace
candle and
lamp.
They dance me
red, orange, and azure too.
They draw me
in inviting me
out of dark pettiness
and so they echo You.
But fires also rage and raze
forest,
homes,
hearts, and I
swear that when I
shake my first at You,
You play the
Flame and I the
wick.
Here is light plating earth;
sliver sightings of a world not yet
green nor gold, a
pre-dawn pewter that
stems birds just
at the cusp of their awakening
taking choristers’
breath away. All of
this before gold
gilds the earth and
me in wonder at its incipient
coronation – a beneficiary – at this
now silvered sight that
calls, nay, bawls us all into being as
earth is born yet again.
Heading home, Friday last,
I passed the Salvation Army and
the street lamps did me the honour
of multiplying my shadow leaving me
variously iterated in black:
here short and squat, like a puddle at feet
there long, lean and sliding across the street
but ahead just right, properly proportioned
and cutting a sweet angle a little left of centre,
slightly smug until an ambulance navigating the traffic
rendered me red on Sally Ann’s wall –
each shadow dancing a life under
the aegis of an emergency’s brief
incursion – after which I stepped
off the curb and slipped across
the street into a stretch
of easy dark.
Dear Readers,
This evening was our annual Art and Vespers Service at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary. I was asked to respond, poetically, to Isaiah 40:26. Both the verse and my response follow.
Lift up your eyes on high and see:
Who created these?
He who brings out their host and numbers them,
calling them all by name;
because he is great in strength,
mighty in power,
not one is missing.
Light arrested my eyes last night
Light older than our mother, earth.
And this light sang to me,
Of comets and constellations
Of darkness and dust
Of cherubim and seraphim.
This light was wise, apprised of
The good, the true, the beautiful, yet it knew too
Of my fear of being blindsided by high-minded expectations of
Stellar piety.
And so it settled me, this light – it sang me
Into rapture as it captured me
With a luminosity
Both soft and penetrating.
The lights in the sky are not mood lights, but
Explosions of joy,
Incensing cosmic altars
Imaging mystery for all
Lifting high, each eye.
The lights in the sky are not
Content to stay, but earthward
Make their way, their rays
Making of me
A mess.
I weep their beauty, a puddle of poetic potency at my feet.
I am undone by You, You the Light of lights
Of star, of moon, of fire, of me, of us.
Aflame, we light out and so light up
The sky, until we fade into the dark
Where you remember each of us,
as we surrender to the sky that we become.
