Brushes With The Dark Law

 (Published in the May/June, 2023 issue of Cathexis Northwest Press)

The God of Gaps

 

At the base

of tall redwoods

I stop thinking 

about thinking.

I wait in the space

between tall words.

It’s October and the late 

afternoon light

rests on its side

yet wavers from the wind.

The wind’s too much

for words I have remembered or found.

The only song now

is up in the crown.

There’s room

between the song I want to hear

and what keeps singing up there.

 

There’s a distance

between the right word

and me. 

Sunlight diagonals

fall through tall pillars of spongy bark, 

from canopy to duff,

to mark the link of shadow and light.

The trees invent the light.

They invite us to parse it.

We learn from what is sparse.

There is a Japanese word

for light like this

in the forest.

I can’t remember it.

I can’t remember enough.

Proper nouns, then nouns… in that order

words slow.

There is darkness between what I knew

and know.

The light in the forest

fills in its name,

komorebi.

Does this not sound like song?

Did it ever not sound like you

or me?

Nature needs to abhor a vacuum.

Without questions, words come

to the dark room between us.

The autumn wind

in this redwood forest can rain down

widowmakers in the gaps

or fill silence

with  a rush of singing

or stain a page

with exactly the right word

as long as this light lasts

and joins us.