Tag: Apophatic Theology

Uncut

Before the word, the light stood whole—
no edge to catch it, no angle
to prove it was there at all.

Then the word came, a shadow
thrown backward across the light,
trying to give an edge to what
threw no shadow of its own.

This is the failure built into naming:
the stone is cut so it can shine,
and cutting is a kind of loss—
a wound the light forgives
by entering it anyway.

So the word is not the thing.
It is the facet, not the fire.

Hold it still and it goes dark;
turn it, and for one breath
it remembers what it came from.

That breath is the poem.
Not the gem. The glimmer.

The Cusan Sky

When color fails and sepia ascends,
it is not a lesser kingdom taking the throne—
it is the throne admitting
it was always borrowed light.

Blue steps down first,
humblest of the courtiers,
having pretended sky long enough.
Then green,
then every noon-loud hue,
filing out like a court dismissed
from a kingdom never theirs.

What ascends is not a color at all
but the confession beneath color—
the brown of old earth,
old paper,
old bone,
the ground from which all colors briefly rose,
waiting
the way silence waits
under every word
that thought itself necessary.

This is not dusk.
Dusk still bargains with the sun.
This is the sky
relinquishing every borrowed name,
becoming itself
by what it is no longer—

not red,
not gold,
not the day you expected,
but the day before adjectives.

Genesis: The Creation of Adam

He formed him
from the ground—
clay still wet,
clinging.

He bent close.
spent breath passed—
spittle,
the damp of earth
at the mouth.

And the man lived:
warm,
hungry,
leaking already
what he would lose.

This was not corruption.
This was the gift.

Psalm at the Glass

Sand—
before sight,
before consent,
light broken among grains,
each scattering its claim.

Heat intervenes:
lightning’s instant law,
the long travail of fire,
a stone descending
without regard.

What shatters
learns another order.

Glass remembers
its former dust.

In the mirror
a tower stands—
not stone,
but color
held by lead,
raised through fracture.

Harps flank it,
strings held still,
as if sound itself
were waiting
to be spared.

Notes lie as sand lies,
each apart,
each complete,
owing nothing
to the whole.

Or else the chord
was always present,
and hearing is the art
of consent.

Reflection is not the self,
but the hour
when the many
are allowed
to hold together.

The Year Begins Again

The year begins again, before we ask,
arriving as the light does—simply so.
We do not grieve what has passed.

Too few the days, the weeks, the months, the years
still allotted to our keeping.

We do not hold them, nor pretend to save;
we meet the hour as it comes, unadorned,
and give it back in care, as best we can.