The Properties of Light

Mid-October in Central Park, one of the elms

has changed early, burning with a light

grown accustomed to its own magnificence,

imperceptible until this moment when it becomes

more than itself, more than a ritual

of self-immolation. I think of sacrifice

as nourishment, the light feeding bark and veins

and blood and skin, the tree better off

for wanting nothing more. I used to imagine

the chakra like this—a hole in the soul

from the top of the head, where the light of knowing

can shimmer through. In the summer of 1979

I saw that light shoot from my brother’s forehead

as we sat chanting in a temple in Manila.

He didn’t see it pulsing like a bulb in a storm,

but he said he felt the warmth that wasn’t warmth

but peace. And I, who have never been

so privileged, since then have wondered

if we believed everything because not to believe

was to be unhappy. I’ve seen that light elsewhere

—on a river in Bangkok, or pixeled across

the shattered façades of Prague—but it is here

where I perceive its keenest rarity, where I know

it has passed over all the world, has given shape

to cities, cast glamour over the eyes of the skeptic,

so that it comes to me informed with the wonder

of many beings. I can’t begin to say how infinite I feel,

as though I were one of many a weightless absence

touches, and out of this a strange transformation:

the soul ringed with changes, as old as a tree,

as old as light. I am always learning the same thing:

there is no other way to live than this,

still, and grateful, and full of longing.

Source: Zero Gravity (Alice James Books, 1999)