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Thursday, June 20, 2024

Sestina: Light

See that dangling chain of light

Beneath the moon, swinging free

With the dancing of endless age; 

There is that, and there is space,

Together, waiting in a corner

Behind an early dawn’s shadow.


Just as a good rhyme will shadow

The meaning of both words, light

Can grow in the obscurest corner,

But not quite sourceless or free.

What is not the filling of space

With one’s own sense of the age,


One’s certainty of what this age

Will attempt to evict the shadow

That is the prior tenant of space?

We would be the effort of light,

Expending all of our selves to free

Us from the two walls of a corner.


A corner’s opposite is a corner.

We turn one ever day. We age.

We learn to dance, to feel free,

And ignore the spasms of our shadow

As we spin, spin toward the light.

We even lose our fear of space.


They say the oldest place in space

Is the farthest away, that corner

Opposite our own; but if its light

Is the oldest in the sky, then age

Is to time a meaningless shadow,

Or light of time is totally free.


Our young sun’s light is free

To slowly fill up most of space

Over time. A planet cuts a shadow

Into its rays, like a hall corner

Cuts lamp-glow. What distant age

Will see a diminution of its light?


The light of stars is somehow free

Of age, while we’re captive in a corner,

Chained by shadow, dangling in space.