False Light

Late in the day
the sun streams through the windows,
but just in case that is not enough
there are lights, discrete and artificial,
a false sky, too blue
to be real, but creating the illusion
that you are leaving the temple.

What you are really leaving is the basement,
three stories deep in the ground,
gravelike, dark catacombs of empty walls
and spaces that would be dark as death
were it not for the artful and artificial light.

About this poem

Sometimes we have to cultivate our own happiness. Life will not do it for us. We find the light inside, and it shines when life is dark, and lights our way.

The picture is of the Sackler Museum in DC, which really IS three stories down in the basement.

Tom