in light of everything (snow blind)

in light of everything (snow blind)

“We read to know we are not alone.” C.S. Lewis

I, who had always thought of Paradise
In form and image as a library.

“Poem of the Gifts,” Jorge Luis Borges

in light of everything

(and who knew everything was luminescent?)

could you reconsider me?

would you reconsider me?

would you reconsider us?

bathed anew in the all more powerful than a sun

the absence of pigment is white

all pigments combined are black

the absence of light is black

all spectrums of light are white

in the light of everything

the bright white light of everything

shouldn’t we marvel at the indistinguishable all

or do you wish to filter out each moment with a prism?

the colors of our passion and anger and despair

red orange yellow green blue violet

in light of everything

i remain blue and bound to the promise of white light

•

in the dream i am snow blind

i believe i am alone and it is sleeting

the wind is bitter and howling

until i am nearly deaf against the roar

i imagine frostbite spreading from my finger tips

and fear that ice crystals are forming in my lungs

i wonder for a moment about the choice

to acquiesce to the blind stasis of winter

the inevitability of a permanent winter

against which i am not equipped to survive

contemplation is a dead man’s game i decide

diving into a black dwarf as if a martyr or savior

as i move my fingers readying myself to stand

i know that you are there warm as butter on the tongue

“do you pray?” i hear your voice in my mind

although i am uncertain how to answer these thoughts

i know i must move again until my sight returns

and we lie quiet backtoback reading Franny and Zooey

like jesus then i dream of myself walking over snow and ice

deaf and blind in butter-tongued determination to rise again

“yes, yes,” i answer without speaking a word aloud

“i pray with every breath, every heartbeat, this everything”

•

i tripped and fell into a well

mistaken for hell but i could tell

by the endless stacks of books

and the stern and silent looks

tales of labyrinthine fantasies

illuminated our sacred eternity

so i decide to stay a while and smile

reading from this pile of books

imagining you will join me

hurrah, hurrah