LIGHT YEARS

What did you think it was,

The morning light that filtered through the gauze

Of the fluttering curtain

In your first room

On your first day

Of being alive?

What did you figure

When you held up your fingers

And saw the sunbeams

Streaming in between them?

Light years

Light years

And when you learned to stand

One day in the sun

You saw somebody lying on the ground,

Another one of you.

You looked at the dark shape you made—

They said it was a shadow,

A word you didn’t know.

What did you think it was?

What did you think it was

Even when they taught you words

For the glare that bounced off cars

And blinded you in mirrors,

The swirl of oily colors

In a puddle in a park,

The inside of a shell

They called mother of pearl—

A milky light that curled up like a child?

Light years

Light years

The moonlight on your sleeping lover’s face

In your own room

On your first night together

The light that tries to tell you

That he’s real

That it’s his arms around you

That he’s not a dream

What would you say it is,

The candlelight reflected

In his eyes

That gives you back an image

Of what you are to him

Though just a glimmer?

What would you say it is

In the neon signs that spell

The night sky in Times Square?

How could that be the same

As the dim but thrilling

Sense of something brightening

Out there in the woods at dawn

After staying up with someone

Talking on and on?

The bonfire of a sunset

The beacon of a lighthouse

The flashing hand

That ushers in the thunder

The gleam that slides off satin

But catches in the folds

The chiaroscuro of a father’s frown

The stars tossed on the ocean

The light that comes in waves

And in particles.

Light years

Light years

The stars were dead that shone above the campfire

That flickered on the faces of your friends

Singing songs you still remember

Like galaxies of friends already gone--

It takes so very long for light to travel.

What did you think it was,

This light,

Your life --

A light that streamed between your fingers

That caressed those blessed faces

And floods the stage with memory...and forgetting...?