Agate light guided me in childhood. After six decades on earth, I stand before the Alhambra, having found the shape of light.
Being the body of light, better than seeing light.
Claro is the only word for California sky over orchards. The boy is lodged in clarity with braceros reaching for fruit far from their pueblos, far from wives and niños, tied only by claro.
Dawn and coyote trotting through sage; light is the shape of her tooth. Light is the shape of desire.
Even if my name were Luz, still the treacheries of light.
Force without force, one name of light.
Glass, the liquid light of wine takes its shape.
Hold light in your hand. Yet it is not the shape of your hand, but of a doe leaping through morning.
If light is the object’s rejection, as that arresting yellow shed by a lemon among smooth limbs at noon, then what is air but light.
Just because the sun is not God does not mean that light is not. Windows of the quartz crystal’s hex house light the way to ourselves in the dark wood.
Keep the shattered glass, the light of many. My name is shimmer, glitter, glister, gleam and glow. Vowels are lights; consonants are shadows.
Light is the shape of a coronet’s note. The cello’s velvet note of darkness is light’s sister.
Many are called by light, few are able. All refuse to be disciples; for light is the trickster, a shape-shifter—there sky, here water, there star.
Now is the time to let light love us as does music. Flashes from car windows—the pizzicato of light. Let it change your life.
Only appearing to us, light in the shape of the soul. It takes us to the before-sun. It demands we start with the ABCs of photons.
Please crack the darkness on the border, let the light through. Enemy of autocrats, it is named the Great Border Eraser.
Question the light, do not quest for it. Is light the coming-forth? Is light the shape of space, of contemplation, or is it pretending? Light, the shape of pain?
Remember the tremble of light through leaves.
Snow-light. Have you noticed after a nightfall of flakes, the morning under a brilliant sun, the cold ground resurrected by snow-light?
Trust the light, not the window.
Under the sun is our fate, but light massages the land, reminding us that requiems are not the end.
Vivaldi who in death lights the cathedral.
Whole worlds, the entire world and everything in it the vibrato of light.
Xenon, I call you laser-writer. Is your name in the Book of Light, each of its inscribed wings opening up the world’s Yes?
Yellow, yes, the abundance of a daffodil field in noonday sun, the sulfur of our glowing soul.
Zig-zags of light, let’s name them lightning. Or letters of an alien language that remake the body. What is the shape of light? What letters could spell the 1001 names of light? Rune-cut rays? Liquid Arabic shining from tiled pools? Or the pure, black gestures of Chinese?
David Herrstrom
Being the body of light, better than seeing light.
Claro is the only word for California sky over orchards. The boy is lodged in clarity with braceros reaching for fruit far from their pueblos, far from wives and niños, tied only by claro.
Dawn and coyote trotting through sage; light is the shape of her tooth. Light is the shape of desire.
Even if my name were Luz, still the treacheries of light.
Force without force, one name of light.
Glass, the liquid light of wine takes its shape.
Hold light in your hand. Yet it is not the shape of your hand, but of a doe leaping through morning.
If light is the object’s rejection, as that arresting yellow shed by a lemon among smooth limbs at noon, then what is air but light.
Just because the sun is not God does not mean that light is not. Windows of the quartz crystal’s hex house light the way to ourselves in the dark wood.
Keep the shattered glass, the light of many. My name is shimmer, glitter, glister, gleam and glow. Vowels are lights; consonants are shadows.
Light is the shape of a coronet’s note. The cello’s velvet note of darkness is light’s sister.
Many are called by light, few are able. All refuse to be disciples; for light is the trickster, a shape-shifter—there sky, here water, there star.
Now is the time to let light love us as does music. Flashes from car windows—the pizzicato of light. Let it change your life.
Only appearing to us, light in the shape of the soul. It takes us to the before-sun. It demands we start with the ABCs of photons.
Please crack the darkness on the border, let the light through. Enemy of autocrats, it is named the Great Border Eraser.
Question the light, do not quest for it. Is light the coming-forth? Is light the shape of space, of contemplation, or is it pretending? Light, the shape of pain?
Remember the tremble of light through leaves.
Snow-light. Have you noticed after a nightfall of flakes, the morning under a brilliant sun, the cold ground resurrected by snow-light?
Trust the light, not the window.
Under the sun is our fate, but light massages the land, reminding us that requiems are not the end.
Vivaldi who in death lights the cathedral.
Whole worlds, the entire world and everything in it the vibrato of light.
Xenon, I call you laser-writer. Is your name in the Book of Light, each of its inscribed wings opening up the world’s Yes?
Yellow, yes, the abundance of a daffodil field in noonday sun, the sulfur of our glowing soul.
Zig-zags of light, let’s name them lightning. Or letters of an alien language that remake the body. What is the shape of light? What letters could spell the 1001 names of light? Rune-cut rays? Liquid Arabic shining from tiled pools? Or the pure, black gestures of Chinese?
David Herrstrom