LISTENING TO LIGHT
Where does that singing start, you know,
that thin sound-almost pure light?
(Lorna Crozier)
once upon a time I saw light,
counted colours, combed dictionaries
for modifiers, coined countless adjectives
to name light in poems, held in dark memory,
but I knew always the light I saw was
the visible light only, its visibility rendering
invisible the places where light begins,
where it goes, since the whole wild experience
of seeing seems to stop with the firm earth
but now I walk daily the dike that writes a thin
line between Lulu Island and the Fraser River,
and tune my skin to listen
to light’s lyrical lilt, sung in sun-washed,
moon-drawn, shadow-scribed lines,
resilient, resonant, measured without end