The Light Only

A poem for America

Still image from live CNN footage of the Los Angeles County wildfires, Jan. 8, 2025.

The Light Only

        For I love the light too, perhaps the light only.
                            — Czesław Miłosz 

No, you weren’t imagining, 
the red moon reflected 

light filtered through ashes 
of forests, homes incinerated

from within. Floating embers. 
Dry hydrants. The task? 

How to explain resurrection 
to a man drowning in flames? 

How to explain the sprinklers 
that turn on to drive him away, 

searchlights not searching 
for survivors but intruders, 

the cigarette that’s verboten, 
the rape that’s not? Still,

I love the light too. It turns 
a dead sphere the color of fruit, 

turns eyes away from the sun. 
Maybe you’re right, morality 

is the end of humility. But maybe 
also it’s the most necessary 

color in the prism, as distorted 
as it always is. Vibrant. Pulsing.

Not long ago, when homelessness 
was a sin, a homeless man told me,

“Immortality, even among the gods,
is a curse.” Los Angeles is burning.