THE LAMP POST.

     A single source of light to cure the immediate obscurity of night that stretches into a lapsing dark. People are recovered into this light like disrobing secrets, a process of discarding the darkness that engulfs them. An emergence from the shadows, a profound metaphor for the stirring of life. Maybe the elemental beginnings of the sky breathed the same wisdom to it’s stars. And what an endearing fool must sit here, on a balcony, quietly recording an everyday miracle like it is worth the pain! The lamppost, a silent fore bearer to the light maker, as people come and go, as shadows lean, grow strong and disappear.

     At the edge of the world, it is endlessly dark. We were born of this darkness, as an act of defiance that reaches for the light like glow-moths to a flame, like a brief impossibility. We are nothing and suddenly we are flesh and limb and a mouth that speaks, a heart that dances, a fire burning. We were born to be illuminated, wretched or haughty. We were born to be exposed, to be bared before the weight of our truths. Thousands come this way, and thousands go. The roads will grow heavy with their dust, of those who came of darkness and returned–travelers, buffoons, wives, sisters, brothers, drivers. All stripped of their identities, names and roles. When they melt into the darkness, they are once again souls, fluid and atmospheric, and imagined. But for this brief instant, before this light, they are real. They are here. They are wearing their manners, they are going home. They have shape and form and love. They will laugh and cry and pain and sing and go to work tomorrow. They are alive. What a simple miracle it is that they exist. A truth that isn’t celebrated often.

 And yet, haltingly, heartbreakingly, happily, they pass. 

 Life is in the passing.