Let’s go see what Now is like outside. Let’s open the door look up at the sky feel the cold night air on our noses. Let’s look at our breath as we walk out to the street. Let’s look at how Now holds the moon in black branches, how stars shine down with a Now from long long ago, how they stare down on our Now which has coaxed them to wink at us. Let’s listen to the night sounds that rove the dark Now beneath the traffic. Let’s stop, look back into the Now at the end of the street; there is something there but I know it is behind us in a place called Then where our footprints have forgotten we ever made them.
Before going to bed After a fall of snow I look out on the field Shining there in the moonlight So calm, untouched and white Snow silence fills my head After I leave the window.
Hours later near dawn When I look down again The whole landscape has changed The perfect surface gone Criss-crossed and written on Where the wild creatures ranged While the moon rose and shone.
Why did my dog not bark? Why did I hear no sound There on the snow-locked ground In the tumultuous dark?
How much can come, how much can go When the December moon is bright, What worlds of play we’ll never know Sleeping away the cold white night After a fall of snow.
I will not write about Christmas lights garlanding the tree, how steadily red blends to sapphire emerald gold, how strong the little bulbs must be to throw their dancing hearts upon the café wall, how children try to catch them. I will not say there is tinsel draped about the branches like seaweed over pebbles, nor paint the cloths swaddling our skins apricot, indigo, violet, teal. I will not speak of glazed pastries on the counter, how they shine so much they could be varnished, there for the hell-of-it, for the sheer beauty of their glistening berries. I’ll turn away from buses heaving down the rush-hour road, ignore how in all this rain the headlamps could be tumbling garnets, polished amber, as if a picture-book box of pirate treasure had spilt its pearls and precious stones across a tarmacked page.
I will not describe how the sun becomes the sea, I will not delight in words to name its colours – cerise, crimson, indigo, scarlet, madder, rose. I will not try to find a way to show your smile across the table, how it slips like warm charcoal into the fabric of my heart. I will not suggest I light a candle as the year prepares to wane, that you hold a second wick to mine then another and another, that together we whisper a prayer for each growing flame. I will not talk about the light that is everywhere, how far you have to travel for the sky to be completely black (and even then there are stars, there is the moon’s borrowed brightness). I will not question why fire burns more fiercely before sputtering out, or how – when we know we’re dying – we can be so fully alive. I will not say these things because this is a poem about darkness. I am writing about the darkness.
The birds don’t alter space. They reveal it. The sky never fills with any leftover flying. They leave nothing to trace. It is our own astonishment collects in chill air. Be glad. They equal their due moment never begging, and enter ours without parting day. See how three birds in a winter tree make the tree barer. Two fly away, and new rooms open in December. Give up what you guessed about a whirring heart, the little beaks and claws, their constant hunger. We’re the nervous ones. If even one of our violent number could be gentle long enough that one of them found it safe inside our finally untroubled and untroubling gaze, who wouldn’t hear what singing completes us?
Gladsome Lights 