It is a mystery; I cannot fathom it.
It mixes light and darkness: in the dark,
I’ve come to be hidden; in the light,
I see how far the darkness goes.
Last night, green stars above the road.
I lit a candle, and the flame
was fingernail and lily, tongue;
the flame was a blue blade to cut
the night from the night’s stem, to part
the light and the dark, the dark and the dark.
Jennifer Barber teaches at Suffolk University in Boston, where she edits the literary journal Salamander. Her poetry collections are Given Away and Rigging the Wind, both from Kore Press.
