All around the darkness is light

The darkness is surrounded by light

Around the darkness is light

Surrounding the darkness is light

Inside the darkness is light

The darkness conceals light

The reverse, they say, may also be true

That all around light is darkness

That light is surrounded by darkness

That inside the light is darkness

But the one true thing

Is that we are beings

Who emerge into the light

Who see and signify according to the light

And so we may be a bit biased

Against the darkness

Needing the light as we do

Even to be

Even to understand that there is anything

Illumination creates possibility

And the absence of illumination

Creates silence

Which is the well, and which the water?

I suppose they are brother and sister

Standing apart and yet together

In conflict and yet as one

One that speaks

And one that has no words

How is that which is not there

There?

Is darkness the secret father of light?

Or is it the simple limits of light

That leaves a residue of darkness beyond?

Is darkness fully defined by what it is not?

Or does it borrow a bit of being from the light

Just enough to show that what is not

Is too

And light in its generosity ends somewhere

And there the margin of darkness begins

Asking always, even in its absence,

To be.

Like sister and brother

Light and darkness are one

But will never agree.