The Place Where Light Arrives
No one had entered.
Not the deer.
Not the wind.
Not even the fallen rain,
which lay in the leaves
as if listening.
Then light came down
through one torn place
in the trees
and found the moss.
It did not shine.
It stayed.
A thin gold weight
on the green rot
of the world.
Far off,
a bird made one sound
and the silence
closed around it.
The fern held
its small curled fist.
The stone kept still.
A beetle crossed
the lit vein of a leaf.
Nothing asked
to be seen.
Nothing changed
because it was seen.
Yet for that moment
the dark earth
lay open.
Light had touched it.
That was all.
And when the light withdrew,
the place did not darken.
It became
what it had always been—
found once,
left whole,
and never owned.
—
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