The Invention of Light

Lenny DellaRocca

With an upward gaze I will build a lighthouse.
With a broken tree,
make a
great wheel. With a good knot
I could sing
like a tall mast.
With a lightning shell,
paint a
mermaid’s tale.
With twelve brave
men turn swells
to rum, and
with waterspouts
send you a
starry note in
a glinting bottle.
And if all the dark goes darker still with dragons,
I’ll conjure
an arc of visibility
from a fish’s eye,
gouge a hole
in night to free
the North Star
from forgotten charts.
I’ll do this
for you my love—
and sail until I hear
you swimming in the fog,
catch your
underwater shine
above some vague
horizon like
impossible hope
in a torrential sky. Love in the blink of an eye.

Lenny DellaRocca is founding editor and co-publisher of South Florida Poetry Journal-SoFloPoJo. He’s got two full-length poetry collections, two chaps, a Pushcart nomination, more than three hundred published poems, and blah, blah blah.