Why can’t it be light I’d
like it to be light not
light like that light
coming in the window warm
morning at last but light
like a billowing unseen
without any sail
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of What is Left of Wings, I Ask (2018 Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Prize, selected by former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey); Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014 May Swenson Prize), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She is a member of the core faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University which she directed from 2009-2015. In 2018, she was the inaugural Glasgow Distinguished Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she cooks with her family, knits, hand-binds books, and listens to tango music.
Oh, my, Luisa! This one takes my breath away.
Rosemary, thank you. That means so much to me.
LIGHT IN SO MANY MORE WORDS
Is it the light that breaks through “yonder window”?
(It is “the light through yonder window breaks”).
Is it the sunrise? Is it the setting colours of the sun?
Is it the light at the end of the tunnel? Is it the light
of an indescribably lonely but caressing soft light?
Love, life, living, leaving, lost in the Light’s embrace:
Is it any of these lights, in so many more words, you crave?
Or are these lights too light to light your lightened light?