Sunlight

How long does it take to learn the nuances of your love,

the DNA of her breath and the way clouds cast shadows

over her eyes, so that in the grey light of day she is still

something of night,

something of dreams

that you recall for many years, but only in fragments.

It must take decades, perhaps, to learn such nuances and

so few of us, it seems, have the patience to endure, to

tolerate our own surprise at the smallest of discoveries and 

accept such tiny moments

as the progress of our love.

A simple half-step and there you are.

It takes a lifetime to grasp the simple, longer still to know yourself.

Artists still flock to the Amalfi Coast to capture the

incomprehensible Mediterranean light. Perched on the

fragmented, chaotic cliffs one constantly hedges against

the persistent lure of

tumbling downward, seaward,

ending in the transcendental need to climb back up.

One feels the downward pull, too, of the falls at

Niagara, the existential suction of so much water that

you are left breathless in the perpetual vacuum. Even

there one might observe the

rebellious mist that lifts upward,

miniscule tears of preposterous hope.

Drop your baggage here and you will rise up, too.

Language will eventually fail to provide the words necessary to

describe everything. Left to our silences we will momentarily

accept the world for everything it is and fails to be. Some might

confuse such insight with

enlightenment, forgetting that

at least part of bliss is walking on coals.

On storm-laden days you might see a ray of sunlight that pierces

dark clouds, or filters through spring’s pale leaves at sunset or dawn.

Such rays make even the dying chaff and dirt of forest floors

something to worship.

Something on which to kneel,

bury your fingers, look skyward, cleansed by that singular light.

Let the one who reminds you of sunlight be sunlight.

c. 2012, by Martin A. Bartels (working draft)

Part of my new collection, “Unlanguage.”