---
title: Reverence (a Poem)
tags: [Poetry, Beauty]
summary: A poem I wrote about the beauty of light falling on a candlestick and the state of soul we need to cultivate in order to see it.
banner: fruit.jpg
---

| The yellow brass of the old candlestick
| Reflects the dirty window's cloudy sun.
| The candle wax a blue of robin's egg
| Or daylight sky that softens into dusk.
| The artless colors catch and hold the eye,
| A pair unsought like sudden lovers wed.
| A pressure dark, a force unnamed, a tide
| That pulls and pulls is pulling here again.
|
| One calls it "Beauty" true enough,
| But saying so will make the moment said,
| And so disturb the dust that settles here
| Like gray upon the head or wisdom on
| The soul that dare not speak of sacred things.
|
| It's better not to name the thing at all,
| To leave the world to thicken in its bones.
| The light itself then alters in its way,
| No brighter than the light that was before,
| But now with weight like paint that's brushed on strong.
| All grows and grows and crests and goes away,
| And if it goes unlooked at then it goes,
| Unloved, unknown, and so without its gift,
| And poorer I would be until again,
| Some other window's light some other day,
| Reveals the secret to a waiting eye.<!--more-->

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