Into the Light - By Mara Lemanis

 

 

Into the Light

Dark
it is
a dark night
when the Book of Life
hides from me
its manifold light
limitless
like the light
of myriad melting suns
and I only see
an atlas from
the Book of Numbers
flat figures on
the round earth’s
jagged peaks
the spinning lodestone
that binds the fallout
from the stars
to its dense melt
as reams of calculations
distribute lists
of all that grows
builds itself
up from the bed of melts
all that swims, floats, sinks
all that speaks
or sounds the
language of birthright
all that crouches, crawls
walks, dances,
and grows still
like sand
pressed into stone.
They fill the logs
I scan
sums and losses
drawing shutters
over the Book of Life.
I wait
through the dark night
wait for the manifold light.
I blow out the pale flame
flickering
like a stingy sun
flinging
long gaunt tongues
of practiced bursts
slick inventories
records foregone.
I blow out the spent light
and step inside
a vaulting incandescence
flawless
unrecorded
in the pioneer
blaze of life.

 

–Mara Lemanis

 

 

 

Biography: Mara Lemanis is a literary scholar. Her essays have been selected for 20th CENTURY LITERARY CRITICISM and are included in undergraduate student textbooks in the U.S.

She has worked as an archivist for Historical Preservation and with the IRC, assisting refugees in Oakland, California.