“Available Light” by Sandy Coomer
I’ve come to the lake to take pictures,
capture first light lifting off water,
an image that is more
than the muted colors of a somber morning,
a world worn dull with sorrow.
It’s hard to find a reason to smile
when all around me the edges of the good
I believed in sink beneath a hard reality.
I can’t argue that the world isn’t sometimes terrible.
If you listen to its language, you stall beneath its weight.
But watch the lake. It wants nothing more
than to stroke the shore, curl kind arms
around the sun-shifted bank.
The things I want are simple too – a fingerprint
on the window of understanding, a thread of faith.
It’s not memory’s work to hold me crouched
against the brick walls of my suffering,
nor is it the will of my past
to latch the gate and leave my dreams starving
in the shadows of a narrow field.
The sun rises every morning –
the sun stands to speak at the lectern,
sweating and brimming with light.
So what if my heart is broken.
That’s part of a heart’s job – to break
a thousand times over the darkness of this world
and still peer through the smallest window at dawn,
ready to leap across the empty lawn
and gather whatever light lies waiting,
like manna, to fuel a single day’s breath.
I take what I can – a spectrum of color
as photons dance in shimmering waves,
the light brilliant and endless.
Originally Published: Oyster River Pages, August 2017
Also, the title poem for Sandy Coomer’s full length poetry collection, Available Light, Iris Press, forthcoming.
Sandy Coomer is the founder of The Rockvale Writers’ Colony and gifter of The Rockvale “Power of Creativity” Fellowship. Find out more about Rockvale here.
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“Swan” by Rinat Harel
“Swan,” photo art by Rinat Harel
