Poem of the Week | January 08, 2024

This week’s Poem of the Week is “Collision of Light and Dark” by Allison C. Macy-Steines.

Allison C. Macy-Steines writes both prose and poetry, and she is passionate about bending the boundaries between genres. Macy-Steines earned her M.F.A in Writing from Pacific University and holds a B.A. in Journalism and Media Studies from UW-Milwaukee. She grew up in Rockford, Illinois, and now lives in Boring, Oregon, with her husband, daughter, and pup.

Collision of Light and Dark

In the corner of the arboretum,
            you push aside the weeping
branches and step inside.
            The tree closes around you
as if it were a curtain, a stanza, a secret.
            Overhead the sun pierces
through heart-shaped leaves.
            Tiny cones of light, hundreds—
the size of coins, scattering
            across the shadowed contours
of gnarled roots, patches of moss,
            a nameplate that reads “Amazing Grace,”
which suggests a variety of Katsura tree,
            but your mind already starts to build
an image system, a web of association
            without meaning to. Dark and light
flickering side by side. Disco ball. Dance floor.
            How you blinked at your reflection in the mirror
the first time you saw your mascara run.
            Squirming away from someone’s hands.
Listening to the creaky rafters overhead
            in that dilapidated barn, with its red peeling paint.
Later. Much later. Not that time matters.
            The distance of the North Tunnel on I-43N
stretching and stretching until all feeling resides.
            Praying he doesn’t die. Watching her chest stop rising.
Singing while it happens. Singing together
            like your voices are the only sound in the world.
Or rather every sound in the world.
            Wondering about dying yourself, because—
the word bewilder has been quietly whispering be wilder.
            The question of where to begin? of where to break
a line of poetry? of why bother?
            Glow in the dark stars. An infinite maze of possibility.
Trying to separate something—anything. Please.
            You want water and oil. You need water and oil.
But it’s never that simple. Then, finally—
            only when you begin to feel too desperate,
too full, like a balloon that might float away,
            you are left with this— luciferase streaked
across the sky at the peak of gloaming,
            that time you poked holes into the lid
of a mason jar after chasing lightning bugs,
            around the yard, their glowing bodies soft as whispers.
Breath catches in your throat. You stop.
            Everything stops. Better. That’s better.
A single memory that lasts and keeps lasting.
            A single memory you can taste in your mouth
even now—its flavor alive, its impression casting
            against the present, where under the tree,
you continue to examine each dash and dot of light,
            shimmering yellow and white,
until slowly you arrive back inside this moment,
            which you imagine as a funnel for transparency,
what it must feel like for tension and longing to dissolve,
            for chaos and ease to stop trying for the upper hand,
to let grace become an experience.
            Before you part the branches and step back
outside of the tree’s embrace, you hold your hand
            toward a single prick of brightness.
You feel the shape of it like a wound.
            You let it puncture you far into the future.

Author’s Note

A few years ago, my husband and I moved onto the tree farm where he worked at the time. Down the street from our home, the farm had an accompanying arboretum and the “Amazing Grace” Katsura tree referenced in this poem is located there. The first time I tucked myself beneath the Katsura’s branches and witnessed the scattered cones of afternoon sunlight, it took my breath away. Words evaded me, but I knew a poem was born in that moment. For me, a poem typically arises from silence or tension. In this case, it was the former. I didn’t know how long it would take to find the right words. I only knew I had to try. I kept returning to the Katsura tree again and again. The poem started to emerge slowly, inviting in an entourage of autobiographical details and circling images, ideas, and feelings of intersection and opposition— a web of tenderness and grief, wounds and healing, growth and decay, ineffability and meaning, interiority and opacity. As the poem built itself in my mind, I read and reread Marie Howe’s perfect poem “The Copper Beach.” I came across Eliza Rotterman’s lines of poetry, “In my own made-up dark / I understand…/ I am falling towards my own / untraceable light.” I also found and dog-eared a page with this quote by Sarah Manguso, “Everything that’s ever happened has left its little wound.” I see my poem in conversation with each of these inspirations as it explores collision and coalescence in both abstract and concrete ways. What does light look like when it pierces through the branches of the tree? How does memory serve as a source of shadow and illumination? And what happens when we let the past puncture the present or press itself up against the future?