The Discovery of Light

Light, light, so much light!

Suddenly, at the end of the slow process,

enormous brightness everywhere.

And everywhere became larger.

I didn't have words, and scarcely thought.

But I had perception. I perceived

bedazzlement and my body's reaction.

Now I would call it shock.

Noise, too, was everywhere, huge,

around and through me. I had, you see,

no sense of a separate self. I

was the everywhere, with no edges.

I began to distinguish voices.

"She," they kept repeating, and somehow

I knew that "She" was me. So began

the experience of limits.

In every direction, whiteness — which had 

angles and corners. Heads and bodies

disappeared behind what I now see as walls;

but then I had no names, no concepts.

Movement was happening. Noses and chins,

cheeks and mouths and eyes, which I did not then

know or understand, moved close and away.

There was a sense of speed, of bustling.

And I felt myself moved (not fast, not a lot).

I was taken and wrapped, moved further from

a part of the everything, a dim lump

that I knew I needed — my exhausted mother.

And all the time, startled by light, I kept looking.

I began to experience my mind’s reaction too,

which now I identify as awakening

curiosity, even a beginning of wonder.

April PAD Challenge, day 5: A discovery poem

Submitted for Poets United's Poetry Pantry #205