The Highest Light

The highest light is the light within.
Descending, we ascend and win
The heavens, though they distant be,
Reposing here 'twixt you and me.

Our coldest season lights the spark
That vanquishes the roiling dark;
Our blindness ebbs toward understanding,
Furnishing the view commanding:

We constitute a constellation--
But bound up in our situation,
We see, but do not comprehend,
And strive, unto the bitter end.

Exhausted by the endless push
We never see the burning bush;
What would be the path we took,
Had we but turned aside to look?

Every tree's already lit,
Awake within, and ponder it.
Look beyond, and look again--
Perhaps you'll understand it then:


Every light is the light within,
And every thought its distant twin;
Immortal is our evanescence,
Our orbit is our very essence.


--Mr. Gobley

In Praise of a Splinter

Between the ridges of a fingerprint,

A microscopic javelin:

You have to hold up the finger

Against a dark background

Even to see it.

And yet, each time you brush it,

The whole body thrums with a

Warning, a plea:

A need.

You ask yourself:

How can something so small

So alter my outlook?

How can the barely visible

Be so unbearably insistent?

Your day is filled with such splinters.

Do you not see how finely woven you are --

How the plucking of one nerve

Awakens you to the vulnerability,

The sensitivity,

The dangerous thrill

Of simply

Being?

My splinter was the shaft

That split open my slumber.

The tiny opening it made

Let a world pour in.

i thank it.

--Mr. Gobley

Prayer After Giving Thanks

One moment of respite
Within the womb of plenty
Is worth a lifetime of gratitude.

Please teach me to give thanks
When I am bereft,
To sing hymns of praise
When I am abandoned,

And to remember the bounty
Of breath
In that instant
When it
Ceases.

--Mr. Gobley