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Poem about light

You can try to strangle light.
By Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno
Winter 2009 11.1.09

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You can try to strangle light: 

use your hands and think 

you’ve found the throat of it, 

but you haven’t. 

You could use a rope or a garrote 

or a telephone cord, 

but the light, amorphous, implacable, 

will make a fool of you in the end.

You could make it your mission 

to shut it out forever, 

to crouch in the dark, 

the blinds pulled tight—

still, in the morning, 

a gleaming little ray will betray you, poking 

its optimistic finger 

through a corner of the blind, 

and then more light, 

clever, nervy, impossible, 

spilling out from the crevices 

warming the shade.

This is the stubborn sun,
choosing to rise, 

like it did yesterday, 

like it will tomorrow. 

You have nothing to do with it. 

The sun makes its own history; 

light has its way.


Reprinted with permission from Slamming Open the Door (Alice James Books), ©2009 by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno.

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