Winter Light
We are in the time of Phos hilaron, gracious light.
Evening’s phosphorescence through skeletal trees arrives around 5:15. This light stuns, dazzles, illuminates. Do I love the day’s first light, or last light best? I can’t choose. I do know that when the sun sets in the west and shines on our sourwood tree, it’s last leaves are the stained glass in our formerly green cathedral.
Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz, edited an International Anthology of poetry titled, A Book of Luminous Things. This collection speaks of “epiphanies, realities unveiling. An epiphany interrupts the flow of time when we intuitively grasp an essential hidden in things or persons.”
“I see the light,” is an expression of an ephiphany, or ‘showing.’
The Book of Common Prayer includes an evening prayer called, “Gracious Light,” or The Phos Hilaron. The tone of the second verse is Celtic in essence: Now as we come to the setting of the sun, and our eyes behold the vesper light, we sing Your praises . . . .
I love this word magic and the illumination it brings to the world. Wonder is present. The miracle of the moment revealed.
I heard Mary Oliver read in St. Paul, Minnesota. She leaned on her podium and said, “All poems are prayers.” Perhaps all prayers are poems, too. (I’ll leave that discussion to my theological friends.)
In Mary’s book on writing, A Poetry Handbook, she shares her light: “Good poems are the best teachers.” She is suggesting that to see the light, you must read, memorize and inwardly digest works by great and ordinary writers. Poetry is found in your library in the Dewey Decimal system at 811. Book stores are bursting with poems. One will fall from the shelves into your hands crying, “Read me!” (This happened to me.)
Mary reminds us that the light/essence/voice of poetry is found in details. Details identify you. The late Stanley Kunitz’s voice remains as present as his watering can. (This poet knew his dirt.) Anemones and veronica bloomed to please him. Verse one of “The Round” is full of light.
The Round
Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloomers
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me.
~ Stanley Kunitz
Allen Ginsberg saw another kind of light.
When The Light Appears
You’ll bare your bones you’ll grow you’ll pray you’ll only know
When the light appears, boy, when the light appears
You’ll sing & you’ll love you’ll praise blue heavens above
When the light appears, byou, when the light appears
You’ll whimper & you’ll cry you’ll get yourself sick and sigh
You’ll sleep & you’ll dream you’ll only know what you mean
When the light appears, boy, when the light appears.
~ Allen Ginsberg
Stop for the light. Pay attention. Put it’s presence on the page.
Attention!
Food for Thought, a Soulspeak slam, will be held at Rainbow Community Center, Saturday, December 13, 2014. After our over indulged Halloween and Thanksgiving, and our impulsive purchases of dark chocolate Santas, come down to earth. Soulspeak is raising awareness and $$ for MANNA food bank. The main course will be be poetry. Bring dollars and peanut butter. YOU are invited! 7 pm. $15, $10 students/teachers.