What Light Can

Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent


They can be like a sun, words.
They can do for the heart
what light can
for a field.
-St. John of the Cross, Love Poems from God
                                     (trans. Daniel Ladinsky)

During the deep blue dawn
I woke to the silent laboring of the fog
encasing the lower branches
of the tree lines and weeds of the fields,
sheathing them in ice;

the gauzy moonlight
illuminating, in a moment,
their glassy intricacies,
the worn-bone backs
of the snow-bent hills.

What lovely and miraculous transformations of the world, of an ordinary day.  How love stumbles and becomes the exquisite dancing; empty the word singing; broken the bright prayer rising. The Lord creating things of light out of so much darkness while we turn and fold in our sleep.