light

a descent of the mind to gloom
is that slow wind-down of a senile clock,
that dull drip in a country sink,
that gray water in a pasture puddle

it tightens the jowls
and draws the heart into the stomach
and aches the legs toward a bed
where relief-in-sleep is a fool's illusion.

winter, it does not consume,
it extinguishes by bloat,
crowding my primal inner space,
suffocating it by a crawling expansion.

observe the fester of a sore,
how it begins in a spot
and advances, by dint of invasion,
overspreading with a brute passion.

that is the assault on my
primal inner space
that can come most any time
but particularly in winter.

with the bowing of the sun
to the earth's roll,
when her light ebbs away
and becomes an ineffectual flirt.

the assault
can get hold of me, and i
play the part of a mortal pulled
down by the hands of Hades himself.

i felt it for the first
time when i was old enough
to distinguish reason from the mind
and draw romance from the heart,

when associations first formed between
the material world and the
spiritual, when pain could be felt
somewhere other than the flesh.

there was a click in a moment
and i was no longer inside
myself but had stepped out
and into the sphere of others

and everything after that was
pointed to knowing, and pointed to
feeling, and pointed to the muscular
act of believing in a thing without proof.

how the descent of the sun
in the fall made the shadows of
the world something that now breathed
and made darkness a stalking menace.

it was at this same time - a time of revelation
and the bridging between the solid and the
fluid of life- when the darkness had seeped in
and begun its strangulation,

that i rode, in this gloom, in my parent's car
down main street in december, staring out
the window, feeling the breathlessness
of that choking of the soul,

when above us there passed lights on a string,
like the pulse of a beacon,
then a second, then a third, and i looked
up finally and began to count the strings

that had been strung 'cross the street
between the light posts, fat white bulbs
beaming in their fat white way hung upside
down like glowing acrobats on the circus wire.

the entire street, down its straight
way, was uniformly lit, equally and
of a perfect imperfection, a supine ladder
of lights suspended on rungs between those posts.

the town was of tall brick and short wooden businesses
shouldered together in two sentry lines on
either side of our car, the storefronts
likewise glowing, and with the lights of the cars

the scene became something of a jewel
afire, alive with an untouchable and reverent
warmth that had me sitting forward and
spectating on a brilliant miracle.

it had for me the effect
of being buoyed to a surface
after a long descent, the feeling
of a palpating heart and breath-hitch

and from that moment till now
and after now i look to the lights
at christmas as a favored thing,
a thing that holds the best of it.

the lights on trees, in lamps,
in the tall windows of shops
on the roofs and doors of homes
and strung across streets

what i think i dream of christmas,
when i do dream of that particular time,
is not of the meal, of the gifts
or of the family who partook

traditions count for something:
as markers along the short line
of our histories, fragile slips
frayed by the winds of memory

they are something enamored
and reused in a romantic way,
valuable in how they
keep us tethered to contentment,

but light acts a different part
in this primitive play;
it stands not as a marker
but as a thread of currency;

a thin potency coursing through,
pulsating within the conduit
of life, unbroken in the way
it knows how to find you wanting.

time and time over and time and again
light grows in that darkness
like searching irises and
their glow expands the inner space anew

for christmas is a time of
tradition, to be sure, but
the songs, they fall away;
the vacations from school,

the movies, the shows,
the family and the friend
the eve and the morning
and the unwrappings.

they all fall away and are hung
as markers on a line of histories
important in that form, in that
station, but different than the lights

the lights come before and remain
afterward, well after, and
have no histories or fading
inequalities, they simply remain

and in their place
come as a friendly force
to liberate that primal
place of the occupying darkness