Light Meditation

[Steve Collins]

How do you feel when the dark goes out?
Are you afraid of the light?
Does it make your lies water?
Do you screw up your heart and hide under the covers?

The light is a flood that will level your landmarks to a plain,
leaving you no shelter or familiar territory.
It will carry away the house of your comfortable darkness
and give you only holy ground to stand on.
It will fall like stone upon you.
You will be the only thing that casts a shadow,
but your shadow will flee behind you where you cannot see it.

You will grope for definition like a climber in the fog,
your hands will search for edges that tell you what is and what is not,
and you will not find them.
You will cling to frozen certainty for fear of falling.
Your map will be too small.

The light will burn your skin.
The light will bleach your bones.
The light will leave you snowblind.
And you will not be the same.

You will look into the sun, and know the names of clouds.
You will learn 50 words for snow, and discern them all.
You will see the horizon, and not know how to come in.
You will forget how to talk, except too much and ecstatically.
Your speech will be oblique and without explanations.

And you will return to the darkness as a messenger
bearing an endless blazing sky within.