Lighting a Fire on the Feast of St. Lucy

Public Domain

For today’s feast of St. Lucy, here’s a poem I wrote two years ago after getting a fire going in my fireplace.

Lighting a Fire on the Feast of St. Lucy

What is light? The waves and particles?
The radiation warming and giving sight?
The Sun? The stars? The fire lit at night
Reduced at last to embers, burning coals?
The flip of a switch, vibrations electrical?
The soft blue glow of our phones, outshining sunlight
And starlight and moonlight and firelight and all the lights
From the birth of the Cosmos, reflecting, residual?
O Lucy, o iridescent one, please speak,
Please tell us how it is that you still shine
When all the lights we know cannot reach you?
What is the source of your celestial hue?
And how far beyond the Universe must I climb
To reach your home, the holy mountain’s peak?