April Poetry: This Is What Life Does

In recognition of Poetry Month, and to celebrate our treasure trove of Orcas Island poets, Orcas Issues is pleased and honored to offer daily poetry during April.

This Is What Life Does

after “Starfish” by Eleanor Lerman

Life grants you light
through the glass in the morning
skims across the water
outside your door. You see it bouncing
around your tea cup and you feel
yourself drink it in.

Then life suggests you pack a bag
leave the territory you know best
and you are reminded
of the time you rode the train
from Glasgow to Oban and the foliage
outside the window looked
exactly like home.
The bow of the ferry there opened
like the jaws of a whale
and made you think of Jonah
and the picture books depicting
people inside the fish’s belly
starting a small fire.

Is this what life wants now
for you to ignite the incendiary,
incandescent, atomically luminous you?

Later, you consider darkness
and the blue light that visits just before
darkness settles in. You decide you have
a preference for its softness and its secrets
its invisible existence as canvas and contrast
you smell its mineral smell and lean
into its long silences, its depth a place
to linger for hours and when you notice
night is simply a sieve for light
you talk back, you say,
Life, let me be that.

© Michelle Reed