Dark Light
Alexander Etheridge
Even at dusk the light is rising—
In the thick shadows of 3AM, the light
knows its way through it all. Watch colors
flourish in lightlessness, and watch a path
fly out into night, becoming its own
miracle, growing wings and anointing
ancient dark. You’re never alone, most certainly
when you’re alone—you can see through blindness
into caverns of another world, where pages
of a prayer book set out in flocks over a river.
Even with your eyes wrapped in gauze, you see
worlds behind words—that space of deep light
in the pine barrens and quietly gathered poplars.
Follow the foot-tracks through black snow
to the temples of dark light, brighter
the darker it is.
Alexander Etheridge (he/him) has been developing his poems and translations since 1998. His poems have been featured in Wilderness House Literary Review, Ink Sac, Cerasus Journal, The Cafe Review, The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999.
