Lamplight

For as long as I can remember, I have loved the play of light: the light that slunk under the shades in my childhood bedroom, circling pools that wound through the fabric pulls; the light splotches in the creek, dappling water and minnow with leaf and sky; the Christmas lights on the bridge and the glass-porch tree with the house otherwise unlit; the startling, ghostly platter of silver moon reflected on the middle Tennessee countryside slathered with untrod snow that I glimpsed from a train window somewhere around 2 or 3 AM in January 1965; the light of my lamps in late night at home.

This is the light I love most now, a splattering of warm yellow on mahogany and Colombian art and Romanian runner and red couch and flowered rug, the light of reading before bed and of quiet at the end of a noisy day. The light makes me feel welcome in and of and to myself.

If I could be anything, I'd be a painter of light and shadow. If I could live anywhere, I'd reside inside the surface of a Caravaggio or a Rembrandt, bathed by light and shadow.