'If the thing desired is really light, the desire for light produces it... The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as they are, in all their truth' - Simone Weil 

That spring day in a small space 

not much bigger than a child's hand 

there was a whole world moving

Where the mirror had shed its film of dirt 

grass was swaying in the blustery wind

beyond the beams of the old barn

The sun was flickering behind the clouds 

that were dancing like a masked parade 

or like memories blowing across a mind 

Things were touching and scattering apart 

as if everything was being born all at once 

and nothing was coherent or familiar 

It was as if the years of what I once knew

were lifting like layers of gathered dust

being blown off the face of a window

Some times I am just a body making sense 

of threads thrown together in chaos 

at a time when there was no reason 

I have wanted to wipe the slate clean

no more than that to climb into its story 

and touch its objects and figures 

Yet it has seemed each morning I wake 

and another veneer of dust has landed 

separating me from what is really true

And I still can't see all the way through

so many things seemingly obscured 

the portal I look through still so fragile 

Maybe this is you holding me safe God ? 

but it feels like a restriction to seeing you 

or showing you who I really am

And as I watched the scene began to move  

into a landscape of pattern and meaning 

like letters joining together to make a word

Far within that gap in the dirt 

I did suddenly see as if from before time 

the light of the sun trembling on the water 

And it was reaching through the glass 

as my breath steamed over its surface 

and then like sea mist floated away 

It is this light that brings us here 

and helps me to see you and you see me

no longer reflected through a mirror

A soul emptying itself of all its own contents 

to receive into itself the being it is looking at

which is you just as you are in all your truth

Not just a word but in flesh and body 

you and me now opening to fall like rain

freed from the dust clouds on this old frame 

When I turned there was a pathway of white 

like a ship had driven across the sky

a ship that carries us when the waters rage

'For now we see through a glass, darkly, 

but then face to face. Now I know in part; 

but then shall I know, even as also I am known'

Old mirror in the barn / Trees by the lake - Bonnevaux, France 

Painting - Free Fall - Margaret Morrison

Quote - St Paul