up before dawn on an ordinary weekday
in a worrisome world
Light candles
plug in stringed fairy lights
turn on lamps. Notice the neighbor’s porch lights
reflected in your windows
Step outdoors
Walk carefully but
Walk
See how still lit street lamps and the moon
shine on patches of leftover snow
Before you step into
your small local life
in the huge world that every day feels
more dangerous
breathe
Breathe even when it’s hard.
Look to light
Candle, moon, street lamp
You are tasked —we are tasked
with going into the world every day.
We choose to
be loud and forceful or
quiet and watchful
or be another in these links of light—
The way once in a dark church someone
pressed a lit candle to another wick and another
till the whole room glowed
and even though we are hard pressed
I can reach my lit candle out to you
and you can reach to whoever life has placed next to you today
and I make no claims that this will save our world
But
here,
but now
It is a way to build this day into a day of light
Puff Of Smoke Poems 