Poem: Emerging Light -

By Mike Martin

I wake to many things just for today
Rising from my bed after
The quickly falling night hours
Into the breath of stillness,
The mystery of beauty,
Promise of a new day,
The summons of emerging light.

I know light appears, Then vanishes for us all, Surely a holy ceremony displayed. I catch a glimpse of the sky, It seems empty, clear In a monastic way, still Yet present, powerful, Causing me to raise my sight taking A wider and longer view, Gazing at the fixed, And what comes apart. All my life I have been restless With these considerations, Rigidity so tight it fractures, Certainty of methods, The partiality of gestures of love that dishonors all, The one plan to get to God, as if
God were that small, My own inertia.
It only takes a spark we sing, To get a fire going. I say it only takes love, All its infallible energies.
I heard a story teller tell about this spark, Yet she called it a cathedral, or At least I do, Her arms making a circle Speaking about love reaching high and wide, The buttresses and intricacies of what is fixed Yet truly wide open, The attention to the present, An invitation to fling our nets out of our boats Into the promise One more time.
I wake to these sparks These cathedrals, knowing My challenge is to draw these circles wider and wider Stretching out like the sky, Still, yet present, Extravagant in its power.
The wind rises, quickens, As if asking the question what do we not Yet know of love?

Mike is a family therapist in Birmingham, AL. He is also an ordained minister.