Flowing Light Moon

Flowing Light Moon

Full Moon  December 7, 2022

 

Light sees

the world as a flowing mountain of answers

to which we wrinkle tight questions

 

Who are we

without our stories full of questions—

this me studiously avoiding answers

splayed opulent in scrubbed ancient light?

 

Prayer in the plain sense

of going uncovered into a living forest

or the waving heat of aridlands

snow, city, ocean, temperate suburb,

attending to the mountain at hand

color run-through wholly with presence

 

To live as if on a walk ever toward reunion

this light answers that light

a pinwheel of brazen rays answers

wave, particle, refracted, unitary

this mountain of light invites walking

 

Somewhere, anytime, each of us

come naked of questions to the flowing

the incandescent sea

& recognize light as light

 

One question extends playfully in both directions

as echo, as twin, as consciousness, as divine

 

Why have we kept from crying out in love—

in crushing praise of the birthing dark,

this moon at the heart of everything?

 

Poem by Qayyum Johnson

Painting by Suiko McCall. The Way has no Northern or Southern Ancestors, 2019. Ink on Yupo, mounted on panel, 32×12″ diptych.