“Light” is not the proper word

To describe the sun in early spring.

“Light” implies an awakening; an epiphany,

But this is more like a sedative;

A morphine to unburden us

Of the sting of winter.

Within the swaddling stupor

Of its whispering rays,

We abandon ourselves to the delusion

Of hallucinogenic daydreams.

Although, perhaps this feeling is “light” after all:

The aura of enraptured discovery,

Brought forth by the divination

of this siesta’s stirring trance,

Because the deeper into slumber that I sink,

The higher I ascend into the summits of the galaxy,

Magnetized by the reverberations of the solar spirits.

The promise of celestial transcendence beckons me.

I cannot resist its splendor,

And as I draw closer to its presence,

I realize that I am becoming a part of it,

My whole being inflamed

by it’s eternal yet spontaneous translucence.

Yes, I am “light” itself,

and everything I was that was not light evaporates.

I am Baptized by the fire of redemptory cremation,

until there is nothing left of me at all.

Only then am I deemed worthy to be incarnated once more,

Reborn a second time

into the consciousness of terrestrial existence.

But as I awaken back into the lesser reality of this dimension,

An indelible mark is emblazoned on my flesh

As remembrance of my metamorphoses;

That pilgrimage across the universe

Of my unmoving sleep.

A shroud upon my skin;

A coloration falling somewhere

between tan and sunburn.

Now the truth is revealed to me:

This is not “light” at all.

This is dark.