I love this poem. Follow the light<\/i>. I’m a wreck (in a good way) and have been all day. This poem is perfect for Good Friday. Waterworks.<\/p>\n
Light, at Thirty-Two<\/b><\/p>\n
It is the first thing God speaks of
\nwhen we meet Him, in the good book
\nof Genesis. And now, I think
\nI see it all in terms of light:<\/p>\n
How, the other day at dusk And I understood, finally, And now, I’d like to learn And there is.<\/p>\n \n That poem just gives me such a pang in my heart. Of course I’m all wacked out today so a teeny drifting snowflake makes me want to weep with the beauty of it all … but still. I remember reading that poem on a more normal day (emotionally, I mean) and being very moved by it.<\/p>\n A bit more on Michael Blumenthal here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Michael Blumenthal: A Letter to my Students<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love this poem. Follow the light. I’m a wreck (in a good way) and have been all day. This poem is perfect for Good Friday. Waterworks. Light, at Thirty-Two It is the first thing God speaks of when we … Continue reading
\non Ossabaw Island, the marsh grass
\nwas the color of the most beautiful hair
\nI had ever seen, or how?years ago
\nin the early-dawn light of Montrose Park?
\nI saw the most ravishing woman
\nin the world, only to find, hours later
\nover drinks in a dark bar, that it
\nwasn’t she who was ravishing,
\nbut the light: how it filtered
\nthrough the leaves of the magnolia
\nonto her cheeks, how it turned
\nher cotton dress to silk, her walk
\nto a tour-jete<\/em><\/p>\n
\nwhat my friend John meant,
\ntwenty years ago, when he said: Love
\nis keeping the lights on<\/i>. And I understood
\nwhy Matisse and Bonnard and Gauguin
\nand C\u00e9\u00ba\u00a1nne all followed the light:
\nBecause they knew all lovers are equal
\nin the dark, that light defines beauty
\nthe way longing defines desire, that
\neverything depends on how light falls
\non a seashell, a mouth … a broken bottle.<\/p>\n
\nto follow light wherever it leads me,
\nnever again to say to a woman, YOU
\nare beautiful<\/i>, but rather to whisper:
\nDarling, the way light fell on your hair
\nThis morning when we woke?God,
\nIt was beautiful<\/i>. Because, if the light is right,
\nThen the day and the body and the faint pleasures
\nWaiting at the window … they too are right.
\nAll things lovely there. As the first poet wrote,
\nin his first book of poems: Let there be light.<\/i><\/p>\n