My D-I-L: the poet

This is my d-i-l (which stands for daughter-in-love, since more than law binds us!) In addition to the many amazing things about this young woman, which I could list at length, she is also a poet. The following poem was published last fall in Towerlight: the Literary journal of Hillsdale College. I think it is beautiful, just like she is!


L"Etoile du Nord

The lights below swim like a glowing liquid,
A gliding, shifting blur of orange and black
That pools from place to place with streams between.
The pools, deep and vivid in the center,
Fade to fringed, transparent shallows stretched
Down brooks of radiant glow, connecting lakes,
The ripples spreading.
Ripples into roads
Conform themselves on closer sight. A grid
Of light, in one place bright-- a solid square--
In others only outlined with the glow.
The perfect patches like the country's sections
Colored green and lighter green and yellow,
Each lined by gravel road or leafy fence,
A mile square allotted to the plot
Far larger than the block marked with the light,
And yet both show the hand of a controller,
Who shapes the ground to task of busy men.
These nets restrain the city in a narrower mesh,
Tame, or so it seems, beneath the pavement.
'Til flowing light breaks out, the bands unbound
To glide, the light in living lines of gold.
Not stable but in motion like the ants
Which creep in miniature commute, return
From search to colony. The beasts which crawl
Over the earth trace paths to purpose, as
Of those in toil, who seek a livelihood.
The pairs of lights in single file line
records the numbers of the working men
Who go. Each point of light betrays a plan,
A purpose, for some end, or good or bad.
Each point of light, a part of pool, or net,
Or path, like constellations formed of stars
To tell a story or record a hero
In the skies. For out of many, one;
the whole is greater than the lonely part.
The North Star, on its own an astral guide,
Completes the smaller dipper in its place.
From small to great, encompassing the city,
A Milky Way geometry below.