swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

a perpetual source of light
Stuart McFarlane

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Black frost

There is a wicked sparkle to it,
this small piece of black stone;
that’s the strange thing, first of all.
Where does it emanate from?
This raw, resonant light?
The blackness is so deep
it should not shine.
Yet, within, there seems to be
a slow suffusion of light;
like radiation that glows
only in the dark.
There seems to be some vital vein,
as if light, like water,
quietly flows through the stone;
where, deep down, in its lattice,
it is frozen into crystals.
And, in turn, these crystals coalesce
into a perpetual source of light.

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Stuart McFarlane has spent many years, both abroad and in the UK, teaching English. In the UK this mainly involved teaching Esol to refugees and asylum seekers. He is now semi-retired and so can devote more time to writing poetry. He has had several poems published in local magazines and in online publications such as ‘Borderless Journal’, based in Malaysia and ‘Culture Matters’, based in the UK.