Preparing for Sunday, amongst other things I’m struck by God’s pun on light in Isaiah (It is too light a thing that you should be my servant…/I will give you as a light to the nations [Isaiah 49:6]), and I remembered this that came to me last October, watching the light bouncing off the lake, impossible to capture and tame into a frame, the first wild creature of God (Let there be light. [Genesis 1:3])

Light speaks

Light speaks, flashing warnings
off of white-capped waves,
slamming into STOP signs,
seeping, insidious, around closed doors.

Deer by night absorb bites
of car headlights, secreting them
beneath their hides, creating
cloaks of invisibility, but
“’Tis only the splendour
of light hideth thee!”*

A change of light
may indicate an exit.

Even in the dark room, light is not silent;
light whispers, flushed and fevered,
smouldering out of sight to
the point of conflagration.

*From the familiar hymn, “Immortal, invisible, God only wise,” words by Walter C. Smith (1867)