Between the source of this sunlight
and its warmth on my skin,
there dance innumerable beings — many more
than angels on a pin.
The sunlight is infinitely far from me.
Its warmth dwells in my body and finds its being there.
Between us there is the moon,
the dust motes of undisturbed attics,
the flies and bumble bees of summer,
the winged ants, the soap bubbles rising
from the kitchen sink, the faery-wishes
set loose from dandelions, the dew
and the crashing waves, and all the songs
the world is singing. What makes a thing a god
is not its power, its size, its tenacity or age.
It is the interruption of that loneliness of space
which stirs memory in the skin, and moves
through the longing tension of beauty —
dark or light, dangerous and gleaming —
to bring the heat of this body to meet
the infinite self-giving of the universe
where it lives, here, in the source and center of being.

[Alison Leigh Lilly resides in the lovely, thrice-rivered city of Pittsburgh, where she lives on the edge of a wooded park with her partner, her cat, her pet frogs and her houseplants. She devotes her time to cultivating a spiritual life founded on peace, poesis, and attentive engagement with the inner and outer landscapes of wild holy earth. She explores these themes through essays, articles and poetry, and her work has appeared in a number of publications both in print and online. As a member of the Pagan Newswire Collective, she is a regular contributor at Pagan+Politics and the blog administrator for No Unsacred Place. She also writes regularly on her own blog, Meadowsweet & Myrrh. More information can be found on her website.]