Light (After D&C 88:7–13)

By Penelope Moody Allen

First Place

Light sprays swirling stars through black of night,

Surges incandescent nebular eddies,

Splashes constellations on our sight,

We who walk a spinning mote that steadies

Itself by Kolob’s star in tethered flight.

Light rolls Earth around a moon-wound course,

Daily dusk and dawn defining time,

Tides and seasons swinging from this source.

It dictates whether jet streams plunge or climb

And chutes them over land with measured force.

A hurricane in gyre approaching land

And stirring waves to ride beyond the shore

Submits its screaming edge to Light’s command

To stroke the prairie grasses as before.

Light can build a forest without hands,

Generating pillars, spreading dome,

Informing leaves for green and glowing walls.

Light lays up then melts the snow on stone,

Forging slender streams and misted falls.

Dissolving granite, lichen kindles loam

That burns as bitter cress in rabbit cells,

Pulsing in an eagle as it soars,

Sliding in a sun-warmed draft that swells

Into a thunderhead that breaks and pours

The rain that will return to ocean wells.

Microorganisms slowly blaze

Within a carcass, charring it to ash.

Each atom in the universe obeys;

Its system whirls, impelled by cosmic lash

Of Light, in Light, to Light in perfect praise.

Both more and less than dust, man spends his might

In maverick zigzags through his jumbled space,

Imploding to a hole that sucks in night—

Unless he fuses with igniting grace,

Becoming as a sun and heir of Light.