Occulting Light

ClaireScott

A light in which the total duration of light in each period is longer than the total duration of darkness. ~ Wikipedia

Lord, let me start again. I don’t want to offend you, but I do wonder why there is so much news breaking bad. Bones, whose? in the desert. Stilts of lightning stalking, fires scorching our land. Can you hear the earth’s great groan, a Black man who can’t breathe, a child with bruises on his back, a woman working two jobs, swallowing fistfuls of Focalin. The lone cry of a wolf.

How can we ride out this strident winter? Why is there no occulting light as we dissolve Percoset in gin and text panicked emojis. What of people with lost faces, breathing burdened air, bodies piling up, can you see them? Over a million. Can you see them? Or do you turn away pretending you prefer tossing haloes like Frisbees down your heavenly halls. Do gods fear the future?

Lord, let me start again. This time on calloused knees, plucking prayers from the air, reciting desperate pleas. When will you whisper promises of better times? I slump over and try to live with curdled dreams, the future impossible to conjugate. Remember you are also the Lord of Light. There must be words of comfort in your Sacred Book.

Claire Scott is an award winning poet in Oakland, California who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has been accepted by the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.