luminous

You fade, under summer skies,

Outshone by the sun as the earth spins

Into morning vigour and I wonder

Did I need you at all?

Is this pale remembrance

Around which I flutter in restless boomerang loops

Keeping me from the stars?

But yet I fix upon the flame I know

Burns as steady by day as by night,

On whose thermal draughts I lift,

In whose warmth I alight,

I fix my eyes to your white heart,

Barely visible in the brilliant day.

And I stay.

At night, as the turning world twists again,

And dread condenses from dusky air,

You shine,

A beacon,

Not warning of rocks to dash my hopes

But beckoning me to lay in lustrous sympathy,

A pledge to push back the many-shadowed black,

And though the monsters remain,

By illumination, to show them only as they are.

I am held captive by my fear of the dark.

I am made home by my love of the light.