poem 9

How bright is the sun?

Bright enough to make you squint?
Enough to plug into your pupils
   like a pressing iron?
Enough to burn through even
   the aching of the eyes,
   clearing doubt of light?

Is it bright enough to illuminate
   past the clouds of pre-dawn,
Where empty hands reach up to faces,
   up to smiles in sleep?

Is it powerful enough to engage the blue of the sky,
Setting it a-spin on an axis different than the dirtball,
   apart from the earth?

Bright enough to show us the thin, thin layer
   that divides the solid and the gas?
Where there is no air or breath
   long enough to say even what it is?

Does light even shine in that void,
Where life fades on contact,
   that space we call lonely,
   that space we each fear differently?

Can it penetrate the place were we decide
   to make our food from the wastes of soil
   and the by-products of air?

Or can the sun beat back the doubt of light,
   bright enough to prove itself
   worth the time giving thanks?

Can it beat back the doubt of light,
   so that we finally come out from under
   rooves and trees,
Into what once was joy and freckles on shoulders?
Are we still scared to call “cancer?”

Or is it enough to truly be the source of all life?

Have we hidden away from it enough?
Hidden it enough?
And now fear it enough?

Have we denied the sun the power to give to us?
Have we denied the sun the power to accept thanks?
Have we processed enough?
Engineered enough?

Those who run from the hand that feeds,
   starve.

Have we run enough?
Have we doubted enough?
Are we brighter than the sun now?
Now that we’ve crawled into that
   unnameable, insizable space?