Look East

Having finished my favorite book of Dante’s Comedy as part of the 100 Days of Dante project, I’m sharing this poem that I wrote as I was reading it. It reflects my current fixation with light imagery and my lifelong love of mountains. I’d like to say that I put much creative effort into crafting it in terza rima, Dante’s chosen poetic form, but I didn’t. Someday when I have more creative space, I would love to work on writing poetry in more form because I really do think that the boundaries of form make poetry more free and beautiful, but for now free verse will have to do. Enough preamble, here it is.

Reflections on Purgatorio

Look East
Towards the rising of the Sun
When the grey sky feels too vast
and the mountain you find yourself on is unkind

Turn to find the glow
Distant but steady, steadily
Follow the shrinking shadows

Let the golden light at your back raise you
With its weight until you can bear the weight
Up through flames that will burn all of you away
So all that's left is you

This moment of yearning in your in-between
Is the transfiguration in the dark of all you knew
Into all you desire
Let it fill you, drink deeply the light

And when the sun carries through its course
Look up
See the stars
Hear their music that calls you
Sing it with them
Sing it out, or sing the harmonies within you
Sing in joyous mourning, in mournful joy
Sing, and awake the dawn