Light
Lincoln Cannon
21 November 2018 (updated 4 August 2024)
This is a poem that I wrote while I was serving as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Southern France around 1995. The poem is a sonnet in iambic pentameter. Each couplet is associated with a color of the rainbow. And there are both obvious and subtle allusions to scripture.
An apple stains the hands and wine the breath
betrayed by blood for pottage and a horse.
“Come home I love you, fire lights the course
and smoke the trials”: Stumble-blind from death.
A lemon orb abreast familiar earth
illuminates the flavor of remorse;
yet verdant hills in peace endow the force
of life restoring love, endear the dearth.
Emerging, once immersed in thunder-highs,
to pure reflection of the heavens and
be indigoed; the spirit testifies
that good becomes reality again.
The summit sets, the stars and moon defies;
at last remains the light without an end.
