Light/Light
April 14 2015


The speed of light is fixed.
Flight risk, for sure
no catching up.

The ultimate prime number,
indivisible
except by itself.
When light over light
cancels out
and creation blinks off.
So where is God, you wonder
in this fearful blackness?

Which happens every night,
so far from electricity
you are invisible,
gazing out
at breathtaking sky
alone in the dark.

Light that has travelled
a billion miles clear.
And you, reflected weakly back
in another billion years.



This poem began with a simple bit of whimsy, playing around with the speed of light -- the ultimate immutable verity.

What it means I leave to the reader.

But I think the key is in its implication of a zero sum game: which is there in the symmetry of God and His absence; in the big bang and its collapse; in light ping-ponging back and forth, and cancelling itself out. You can even see this duality in his ambivalence: seeing the night as simultaneously fearful and breathtaking.

I get a powerful sense of his smallness in a vast indifferent universe. And of man, constructing mythological bulwarks against the darkness of night.

I like the idea of invisibility here: like the tree that falls in the forest, you need not just light to be seen, but also a beholder.

When I write all this commentary, it's not as if I set out to say this stuff, and the poem is the result. Rather, writing is very much stream of consciousness. It's when I go back and revisit that I experience it much as the first time reader does, and try to puzzle it out. If there is some subconscious source of creativity, maybe this is what I intended. But I don't think intention has much to do with it.

I think this may be getting closer to the poem I've been trying to write. I like its ambiguity and concision. There are enough interesting images and fresh language to compel the reader, yet not a wasted word. It gets away from that narrative form I've fallen into, which seems too neat and tedious, spelling out everything. Most important, there is more between the lines than on the page. I think one will want to re-read this poem, then read again. And every time, it will have changed. Which, of course, is the whole point of poetry, and what makes it distinct from prose.

                                                                           ~~~

(P.S. For the arithmetically challenged, I'll just mention that the definition of a prime number is one that's only divisible by itself and 1. Of course, the real nerds will see that I've cheated: any number divided by itself comes out to 1, not 0. Which means creation doesn't blink off: there is still some singularity! Luckily, poetic license allows me to break all laws -- both mathematical and man-made -- at will!)