Pen Light

What is truth?

The dogwood unfurling
whether I am watching or not.
My daughter's laugh
rising through the house
like something holy that got loose.
Achy knees.
An injured tree still reaching.

The mirror might lie
but it cannot reflect
what refuses the light.
I have been that darkness.
I know that particular silence.
I have stood before the glass
and shown it nothing
then blamed the glass.

I am a flicker of something
older than this body knows
older than the name I answer to.
The Way.
Light.
I carry it even when I forget.

I am not the sun.
Not even a torch.
A pen light in a cave,
battery at fifteen,
pointing my small beam
through the shadows.

Loving my way through No One Way.
In love. Out of love.

Trying to remember
I was never not it.

(altered image) original by Scott Froschauer