Properties of Light

A field of light, and my need to say

that it exists. Each morning I walk here

almost blinded by water the sun shines on,

look down from Strawberry Hill

across the roofs of the dazzling city

emerging out of fog, a haze of light

over and around the houses, giving

everything a quality for which luminous

is the only word. My need to see such light

holding and sliding off the eucalyptus trunks,

their ragged bark. To be exposed to the wet grasses

shaking and splintering that light, to recognize

nasturtium leaves for the bright green mirrors 

they are, the red, orange and yellow fires

inextinguishable, spreading up the hill.

Limestone and granite give back radiance, and we

walkers in this field lift our feet and set out,

moving through our once and only mornings,

afternoons. Light searches the surfaces of all things,

and what if there were no mirrors in the world, what if

the brass lock on the door did not say no, the window

did not let the light come through? What if light

did not find itself renewable? As my necessity

for these words, mirrors I carry into the sun

of this blazing day, this dance, this carnival

where I am given access to another world,

to the spirits who walk with me

pointing out the properties of light.

~ Jeanne Lohmann