February 2, 2021
Let in the Light
By Amba Gale
When we, creatively, intentionally, consciously, “breathe in the light,” the darkness begins to dissipate. Can you hear and see and feel and touch the lightness now coming our way? If not, perhaps it’s time for you to turn your face away from the computer screen, as I was called to do, by the Red-tailed Hawk, and the breaker waves from North to South, and the sound of the winds in trees, and listen! Listen to a new song! Listen to a new Voice. Listen to the Music of the Wind. Listen to the possibility of Breathing.
Light dispels darkness. Where we place our attention gives us the world we inhabit. Place your attention on the light.
What does it mean to “be a child on this new day?” A child is playful, curious, OPEN to surprises, is delighted in everything he or she sees. A child has fun. A child laughs. Yesterday, as I was having lunch, outside, of course, at my favorite resort in the Northwest, I saw a child play by a man-made waterfall, picking up a leaf in the water, and, then, jumping up and down in joy for finding the leaf in the water, crying, “A leaf! A leaf! I found a leaf!” as he invited his sister to join him in the fun.
Can we live this way? Can we let in and experience the griefs of our past, and surrender to a new freedom, even as we complete the past, even as we call forth new possibility, even as we profoundly pay attention to a new world speaking to us? Children hear and see a world anew, in each moment.
And, then, there is the word, “still.” When that word belatedly came to me, after I thought the full poem had been written, I heard, in it, two meanings: one, the pull, the magnetization, the longing, the call to rest and “be still.” In stillness one can begin to hear a future of possibility. One can hear one’s inner voice, the voice of the poetic imagination, speaking, the voice of wisdom. And, another, perhaps, while we are still sequestered in our homes, for the most part, while it is not yet time to take long plane flights into new and faraway lands, perhaps this is a time for inner journeying, perhaps there is, “still, somewhere to go.”
Breathe lightly now. Let in the Light.
Perhaps this is a time for inner journeying >
Let in the Light
A sudden gust—
I hear the movement of the trees
calling me to give them my attention
telling me to turn my head from the computer screen
and stop
and look.
Time to be in the Wild once more.
What do I see?
The Red-tailed hawk lighting on a bush by the sea,
at one with the white breakers rolling in,
as if to say,
“Be out here,
be with the day.”
Everything is light.
Watch the white breakers
run from north to south, move swiftly on their way,
playing and dancing, gaily prancing.
They do not care that it is cold outside.
They are celebrating the wind.
Arrest yourself.
Pay close attention to the sea
as she calls you.
Be a child
on this new day.
And then there are the mountains,
kissing the sky,
while a lone plane
flies to the north east,
slowly, as if there were, still, somewhere to go.
The heaviness is gone.
The darkness is gone.
Breathing lightly now,
let in the light.
