Pinpricks of Light

A poem for Epiphany

At the Threshold of Wonder by Jan Richardson

It is dark now. I rise in the dark, I lay my head down in the dark.

Light pricks my skin like a pin,

wake up.

I light a candle, first thing

to remind me this is only a season.

What is it for?

Listening perhaps?

//

There is enough talk.

Talk of dominion and power, excavating, ravaging, extracting, consuming -

in one word, it just means - take.

Was that our original sin?

Eve, our mother, radiant and downcast.

Were her eyes cast downward already while she reached out and took?

With one gasp -

an inhale, we couldn’t stop.

//

And now it’s never enough.

Oil and power, money and land,

bones dug up -

excavated,

demanded to live again,

addicted to cycles -

generational highs

to a false drug.

Insanity drips from the lips

of the powerful,

one feeding the other until -

drip, drip, drip…

-
silence.

The emptiness is a barren womb,

a white-washed tomb,

sucked dry of life.

Land has heaved her last breath,

earth has groaned her last.

//

This is what I hear when I listen

in the dark morning

with only a flame to light my prayer.

I am holding my breath.

//

With an exhale

I wonder -

did wise women also come to meet

the Seed of Light nestled in an

excavated cave?

//

Buried in darkness

under primordial cycles of death,

the Seed breaks open

under pressure.

This is no barren womb

or white-washed tomb.

This is exhale -

life given,

life received.

//

The angel told the wise,

return home a different way,

for the takers want to take,

they want to excavate.

Little did the takers know

the seed had already burst

with too many pricks of light

across this barren earth.