Random Acts of Poetry

Psalm to the Lamp

This lamp is my lodestar,
I will not fall

asleep before dull angels.
It draws me a pale pool of fire,

throws shadows away.
It shows me a moon's worth of eye sheen between flickers.

The mind's tricks depend on a high chandelier
of meanings, filaments reflecting bead-chains of notions.

A lamp drives out bleakness, and light lives--
but can fail in a thunderous click.

Pray the light holds back this suffocating evening's bag of somber velvet;
may all night's children abide within this circle.

Surely its lambent beam will follow the labors of my dreaming hands
and a shimmer of reverie will fill the lit room.