Maggie Smith

Ohio Cento


Radiance, let me accompany you to some place
where light itself might suddenly translate

the words I want
in large, exuberant letters.
Not a place of worship exactly.

I know I can be long-winded sometimes,
imagining your company’s loveliness—

light wrestling there incessantly with light,
all this illumination just to show
the very looking, a way of making divinity palpable.

Sometimes it all feels like an improvisation.
Shapeshifter, trickster, miracle-producer,

I live letter to letter
like an unfinished sentence.
If there’s a temple, I haven’t found it yet.



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