The Kindness of Light

Every night, in his coal-pit of sleep, he turns
stone over stone in search of something he knows
he’ll never find; still, though, he digs
and digs until, at last, the sound of water
seeps into his madness, then a sense of coolness,
of glacial air, the salty perfume of sea bending toward sky.
From black earth he tumbles up and outward,
into the kindness of light.

Galen Garwood 2014