Blind Light
The path is black, the grass is black,
the tendrils of the beech are black,
and the water lurking in the brook
is the shadow the night casts. And yet
we can still see where we’re going
by the dull persimmon-tinted light
the city gives off over the hill,
stretched like satin over the clouds—
All Hallow’s was weeks ago but still
its palette thrives, here in this forgotten
corner of the fens where a black cat
blinks to vanish and the motorway
has melted into myth. Tomorrow comes
the first frost, but tonight we find
dinner: our steps are quick, our words,
few, and the gifts we carry echo loudly
in our hearts’ empty larder:
having given everything since
the last frost and found each other
wanting, we turn to this silence
upon the path as a final grace—that,
and a taxi home, lest this blind light lift
and leave us in darkness, not seeing
the way home, just knowing it.
* A native of Mississippi, Benjamin Morris recently completed a PhD in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. His creative work (poetry and prose) has been published and won recognition in both the US and the UK; he is an editor at Forest Publications in Edinburgh.
