Releasing

Vidya, oil on canvas, 18x18 inches, © 2010 Diane McGregor

I want the light
locked inside to awaken:
crystalline flower,
wake as I do:

eyelids raise the curtain
of endless earthen time
until deeply buried eyes
flash clear enough again
to see their own clarity.


Pablo Neruda, Poem Number XII, from Stones of the Sky, Jame Nolan, trans.
(Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1987)