Borrowed Light

Perspectives bloom, a strange and lonely grace,
Achingly beautiful in their own space.
They hold a strangeness, brittle, sharp, and deep:
For in the heart that birthed them, they are Truth—
The single, undisputed, solemn keep.
While in my gazing, they are but excuse,
A flimsy shelter where the motives roost.

Yet, in that fragile seeing, lies the Beauty:
The sheer, impossible wonder of the view.
To know a soul that finds in drops of duty,
In silent tears, the ocean’s salty dew,
A boundless, ancient floor beneath their tread.
To witness how a sunset is not dead,
But cloaks an ending meant for a new birth.
To summon from a pen the world’s deep cure,
Or let a mortal voice transcend the earth,
Becoming lore that time cannot obscure.

And still, the doubt returns, a phantom chill,
That names my striving an emotional fault,
For bending low to fathom their deep will,
To stand beneath their life’s precarious vault.
Yet, I reflect on this ambitious grace,
This necessary, selfless, yearning role:
For only by absorbing others’ light
Can one illuminate the wiser soul,
And truly know the contours of the whole.