Sorting by

×
Skip to main content

Those who look to you are radiant

Sometimes I make the mistake of being
too corporeal-minded forgetting

we’re predominantly made of light
missing how like the moon’s reflection in a pool

we’ve been made with you to shine
Even in the womb we are luminously woven

& strands of what seem like moonbeams twine
& retwine within lambent bodies all our lives

absorbed like bread & wine into the bloodstream
Do I really know how we taint the light we’re given

& the darkling I’m capable of? I fight
for every touch of your absent hand to be mine

Every drop of your presence draws my thirst
to be built into a temple of light

Photo by Filipe Resmini on Unsplash

D.S. Martin

D.S. Martin is the author of five poetry collections, including Angelicus (2021), Ampersand (2018), and Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis (2013) — all from Cascade Books. He is Poet-in-Residence at McMaster Divinity College, the Series Editor for the Poiema Poetry Series. He and his wife live in Brampton, Ontario; they have two adult sons.

5 Comments

  • “Even in the womb we are luminously woven

    & strands of what seem like moonbeams twine
    & retwine within lambent bodies all our lives

    absorbed like bread & wine into the bloodstream”

    So true and so powerful. Thank you, Don.

  • Sydney Lea says:

    Dear Don,

    Bravo to both! I am especially taken by “Metaphysicals II,” not merely because it is so well wrought but because it contains a lesson about what’s what in this vale of tears– like so many lessons, one I too often forget.

  • Laurie Klein says:

    The luminous and the numinous . . .
    The vast yet intimate reach of time . . .
    The persistent sigh of those long “i” sounds . . .

    As Eugene Peterson once said, “Naming is a way of hoping.”

  • Debbie Sawczak says:

    “we’re predominantly made of light…Even in the womb we are luminously woven…”
    I love this stunning, perspective-restoring idea and the beautiful way you have put it into words.

  • Susan Cowger says:

    I want to read and reread this poem for the place it takes me. What it confirms in me. The words–all the right words…