Both revelatory and mysterious, Lindsay Rockwell’s “Watching the Light Shift” shows us the path without giving us the answers. Lindsay’s sparse lines tumble readers down toward realization, toward the bristling static of something more, just beyond the veil. As for the content of “Watching the Light Shift”, Lindsay informed The Dewdrop that her poem investigates the experience of “Brink”. “A sense of almost and impending presence, and the sensory tension that exists in such experiences,” she explained.
Watching the Light Shift
Zero sum of sound
when sun arrives
in pleated seams.
The clean of it
unbuckling thought.
Centripetal.
Idea as morula.
Sleek slippery embryo.
Not yet pulsing. As it is
radiant. As when edge dissolves
the center glows.
Watching light shift— body
house of breath
& eyes see
how ache lets go its latch
watching light. Rod & cone
unprison
loving shadow too.
& mind mines its own root—
knowing root
is gate & latch laid bare.
Geometry of thought as oar.
Lindsay Rockwell
Lindsay Rockwell is poet-in-residence for the Episcopal Church of Connecticut and hosts their Poetry and Social Justice Dialogue series. She’s published, or forthcoming in, CALYX, EcoTheo Review, Gargoyle, Radar, River Heron Review, among others. Her first collection, GHOST FIRES, has been published by Main Street Rag. She’s received fellowships from Vermont Studio Center and Edith Wharton/The Mount residency. Lindsay holds a Master of Dance from New York University’s Tisch School of Arts and is an oncologist.