Light, at Thirty-Two
anonymous
November 11 2009, 03:56:16 UTC
It is the first thing God speaks of when we meet Him, in the good book of Genesis. And now, I think I see it all in terms of light:
How, the other day at dusk on Ossabaw Island, the marsh grass was the color of the most beautiful hair I had ever seen, or how-years ago in the early-dawn light of Montrose Park- I saw the most ravishing woman in the world, only to find, hours later over drinks in a dark bar, that it wasn’t she who was ravishing, but the light: how it filtered through the leaves of the magnolia onto her cheeks, how it turned her cotton dress to silk, her walk to a tour-jeté.
And I understood, finally, what my friend John meant, twenty years ago, when he said: Love is keeping the lights on. And I understood why Matisse and Bonnard and Gauguin and Cézanne all followed the light: Because they knew all lovers are equal in the dark, that light defines beauty the way longing defines desire, that everything depends on how light falls on a seashell, a mouth … a broken bottle.
And now, I’d like to learn to follow light wherever it leads me, never again to say to a woman, YOU are beautiful, but rather to whisper: Darling, the way light fell on your hair This morning when we woke-God, It was beautiful. Because, if the light is right, Then the day and the body and the faint pleasures Waiting at the window … they too are right. All things lovely there. As the first poet wrote, in his first book of poems: Let there be light.
when we meet Him, in the good book
of Genesis. And now, I think
I see it all in terms of light:
How, the other day at dusk
on Ossabaw Island, the marsh grass
was the color of the most beautiful hair
I had ever seen, or how-years ago
in the early-dawn light of Montrose Park-
I saw the most ravishing woman
in the world, only to find, hours later
over drinks in a dark bar, that it
wasn’t she who was ravishing,
but the light: how it filtered
through the leaves of the magnolia
onto her cheeks, how it turned
her cotton dress to silk, her walk
to a tour-jeté.
And I understood, finally,
what my friend John meant,
twenty years ago, when he said: Love
is keeping the lights on. And I understood
why Matisse and Bonnard and Gauguin
and Cézanne all followed the light:
Because they knew all lovers are equal
in the dark, that light defines beauty
the way longing defines desire, that
everything depends on how light falls
on a seashell, a mouth … a broken bottle.
And now, I’d like to learn
to follow light wherever it leads me,
never again to say to a woman, YOU
are beautiful, but rather to whisper:
Darling, the way light fell on your hair
This morning when we woke-God,
It was beautiful. Because, if the light is right,
Then the day and the body and the faint pleasures
Waiting at the window … they too are right.
All things lovely there. As the first poet wrote,
in his first book of poems: Let there be light.
And there is.
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