“Arise, shine, for your light has come,
And the glory of your Lord has risen upon you”
— Isaiah 60 vs 1.
Across the face of a new dawn, an orchid blooms
in sunlight-lustre in a sea of rosewater & a prism
of mutilated light pares the skin of the river
dissolving into an aqua regia of azure fireworks,
all glitter & ash.
Again, my bones quiver into sonatas, a thread of light
stitching sinews into ribbons. A prayer escapes my lips:
Lord, keep the sanctuary in my heart burning for you,
& a zephyr sweeps embers of grace into my eyes raking the cataracts,
a bride of wildflowers colonized by a colony of forsythias.
I see it now—the whitened breath scorched by the tremor
in the shadows, the fingers clasped at the threshold of heaven,
the opened windows, & the silhouette of a white dove plummeting.
I fall into a flight,
& it is a rapture that ladders me into a rising rhapsody;
Revelation: I stretch my hands to the skies, & confetti
of goodness drenches me in their opulence.
Spirit, lead my feet to walk upon the waters, & not faint.
I beckon to your oil-lamp.
I, a name folding into the mouth of my God.
On the last day,
He called light;
& I became;
& I was light;
& I sang glory!
