What the Light Wants

A poem by Valarie Hastings

The lamps on the bridge over the Navesink tonight

want to be remembered by water. The same way music

vibrates in the four-and-a-half-inch space between

rib bone and what we might call the soul,

in a thrum, then gone. Springsteen

has a house somewhere

along the banks of this river

which is not a river at all, but

an estuary, hulls of light casting,

arc-lamping, stop and go green, red warnings 

for the vessels that plough this black night water

beneath the bridge,

beyond my work hotel window.

What a beautiful word, vessel.

I am the vessel of my child, he of me, my mother

of me. Light carries the vessel of what remains

when the body is gone.

Hear Valarie read her poem:

Valarie Hastings What the Light Wants

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Valarie Hastings is the 2020 winner of the Kowit Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the 2023 Laura Boss prize. Her first collection of poetry, Searching for Dandelion Greens, came out in 2021with Garden Oak Pres. She currently serves as Director of Judges for the Kowit Prize.

Image: Anthony Cantin