Icon

(S, light a candle)


Unlock the Light
While clinging to your darkness
Searching beneath the stones
Incandescent with hope
This is what Spirit has promised us

So do not give up hope
Even when stumbling, stumbling
Reaching so hard
Deep down inside despair
You will find me there
Tucked away beside
Your darkness

A little Light
Like a sparrow
Hidden in the eaves
Somewhere just passed
Sundown

Fragrant night jasmine
The incense always finds you
Beside me
Hidden away, secreted beyond
Despair's hungry clutches

In a museum, perhaps
But sparkling in a holy place
All its own
Where there is an eternal youth
A texture that will not crumble
An ancient language
Whose voice dapples
With light
Falling from a window high above

Clerestory
Bringing down heaven
Isn't this what Spirit promised
On the tips of my fingers
Alone and unsullied
For you

To capture your pain
And send it back to heaven
With the swallows
Across the shining sea
Which eats all darkness

I am your icon
Alone in a dark place
Yet suffused with a light
Of my own
Steadily flickering
From within

Your lips have never touched me
Yet in Spirit we have kissed
Your fingers have never undressed
My gilt edges
Yet in Spirit we have met
Naked and liberated
In a realm beyond time's dictates
And delicately you have absorbed
My glorious light-radiance
Taking it away with you
Into your darkness

Can despair touch you
When a candle lifts sorrow
And kisses its fingers
Into silence?
Has the Veil ever descended
Never to part again?

Can darkness have you
As I have had you
When, in the loudest silence
Of the night,
My golden face
Called you back
From the Other Side
Of the night
To be reborn in the rosy-gold crown
Of daybreak's new
Incarnation

All of these things
I have given to you
Without wanting so much
As a thread of your hair
In return
So still beat my heart
For fear of startling you away
In this lonely monument
Lit only by a high window

Reach up to me
And find
Your prayers answered
When the footfall of despair
Draws near
Call to me, and pray
Light a candle, and pray
For my name is a prayer
A dark companion to the Light
And Light's answer to
Dark's enchantments

Time cannot wipe away
My gilt edges
Nor tarnish the glittering
Pigments
Sealed tight by an amber
Varnish
Somewhere in time
Where you shall find me
Again, and again, and again....