OF LIGHT AND MORNINGS

Lisa St John

I may go out into the world later. 

Now I want to go in 

to the outer world.

Diffused distractions

move along the corners of morning, and there’s a chipmunk. 

Darting in and out of not-so-hidden spaces until

it decides I am no threat.

Refractions and reflections paint the gray out of pre-dawn,

the source moving higher in the sky as I walk. This changes

everything and leaves all as it was before. 

Both Snell and Descartes said so, so….

The deer looks at me, pretends I am not there. She looks at me

pretends she is not there. If I look close enough

there are fleas and ticks and maybe lice, but if I stay still and squint,

she could be a mother or a bride. 

Either way, there are at least fifty ways to cook venison.

There is a rustling. Given away by sound, what was invisible is not. 

There is no color without light, and it’s comforting,

somehow, to know the greyness below. 

I stay still, so still,

and let the mosquito land on my tongue. 

It’s not as easy as it sounds.

•••
Lisa St. John is a retired English Teacher and published poet. Her chapbook, Ponderings, is available on her website at lisachristinastjohn.com. She lives in the beautiful Hudson Valley of upstate New York where she calls the Catskill Mountains home. Lisa has published her poetry in journals such as, The Poet’s Billow, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Albany Poets, Light, Entropy Magazine, The Poetry Distillery, Poets Reading the News, and Chronogram Magazine. Her poems have won awards such as The Bermuda Triangle Contest. The excerpt, “I Still Exist,” from her working memoir, was published by Grief Digest Magazine. 

Photo: ©Rachel Darke, 2020

* Of Light and Mornings was originally published in Light, Issue 6.