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Theater of Shadow and Light
In darkness
I knew I could reach
the light
if I could be
the night: that empty,
that immaculately quiet.
A crisp and sunken moon
knows how it's done—
she quivers in the
touch of pines and
floats on star love and
one slow-turning
frame of eternity,
and so safe,
like an angel, from
this angry little world
I sacrificed another one
of my lives to . . .
until I remembered,
I never age,
I just begin again,
and there's always one
more beginning. Just ask
the mumbling ghosts
on the river,
casting silk,
reshaping moons,
doing what creators
do,
so I might
as well try on
something impossible,
remembering how I once
believed existence
in this world was a
tragic carnival—
ghoulish laughter,
circles of loss,
an ingenious trap—
till I began again.
Some say Rumi's teacher
died for the privilege
of loving him—
oh, to love so much
that losing yourself
is gaining it all . . .
I could fly apart
in this freedom,
in this shell
of dark purity,
showered by messengers
of light, I allowed,
at last,
through the floor
of Heaven.
Die again,
they say,
die once more,
and be born.
Patricia Joan Jones
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