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“When you get here, turn the light around to shine back.”
Lindsay Stuart Hill
“When you get here, turn the light around to shine back.”
-Furong Daokai, 1042-1118
1.
I’ll start with the ending of things:
Sun rising from where it set. How
I left you long before we even met.
I’ll start with dying: that space where
we stand before barreling through
the doorways of our mothers, back,
as if we had forgotten something.
2.
The head of the Metolius
was not a head at all. It was a hand,
reaching up from the ground.
Standing downriver, watching leaves
drift past like a hundred yellow boats,
I knew I’d return. You wouldn’t be there,
and your absence would be like God.
3.
The universe is a box we tiptoe
through, a breathing box that holds
its stars like pearls. When I told
you I loved you for the first time,
your name was missing, and would be
forever. That was the purest fracture:
crack that everything slips
through until we are no more.
Some things are immutable—elements.
As a child, you slammed your door
so many times your parents removed it
from the frame. I can imagine how you sat,
like a mendicant in his half-open
cave, frowning fiercely into the wind.
4.
In an instant, it’s possible
to stop up the gaping hole
of time. We slept the night
with our lips touching, twins
joined at the mouth. Outside,
bush crickets passed one word back
and forth, one trembling word.
5.
Swirling and swelling, waves
and stars. On a sign in my hometown:
perfect circle with water inside,
the view through a porthole.
Not far from the bagel shop,
the triangulating roads,
telephone wires strung
with orange globes so the birds
will fly up or down but not
through. That’s where I’ll arrive—
alone, on the first day of my life.
Placeholder date if desired
Tracing the Light Back
[with lines from “Identity of Relative and Absolute”]
The mind of the great sage of India
is intimately conveyed from East
to West.
I’ll start with the ending of things:
sun rising from where it set.
I left you long before
we even met. I’ll start
with dying: that space where
we stand before barreling through
the doorways of our mothers, back,
as if we had forgotten something.
The spiritual source shines clear
in the light, branching streams
flow on in the darkness.
The head of the Metolias
was not a head at all. It was a hand,
reaching up from the ground.
Standing downriver, watching leaves
drift past like a hundred yellow boats,
I knew I’d return. You wouldn’t be there,
and your absence would be like God.
Fire is hot, wind moves, water
is wet, earth hard.
The universe is a box we tiptoe
through, a breathing box that holds
its stars like pearls. When I told
you I loved you for the first time,
your name was missing, and would be
forever. It was the purest fracture:
crack that everything slips
through until we are no more.
Some things are immutable. Elements.
As a child, you slammed your door
so many times your parents removed it
from the frame. I can imagine how you sat,
like a mendicant in his half-open
cave, frowning fiercely into the wind.
Light and darkness are a pair, like
the foot before and the foot behind
in walking.
There is a blank place inside me,
sacred and numb. It was there
even then—my metal, my fifth
element. Even on the day I was walking
with you in a snowed-under field,
touching the untouched. Through the trees
we were walking, carefully between
the trees, carefully you fit your feet
into my footprints. Even when
I suddenly said your name, which makes
a breaking sound.
The absolute works together
with the relative like two arrows
meeting in midair.
We stopped up the gaping hole
of time. Up to that minute,
our lives had been a series
I respectfully urge those of near misses. Then we met.
who study the mystery: Slept the night through
with our lips touching.
Outside, cicadas passed
one word back and forth,
one trembling word.
Do not waste your time by night
or day.
Swirling and swelling, waves
and stars. On a sign in my hometown:
perfect circle with water inside,
the view through a porthole.
Not far from the bagel shop,
the triangulating roads,
telephone wires strung
with orange globes so the birds
will learn to fly between and not
through. That’s where I arrive—
alone, on the first day of my life.
Placeholder date if desired
Untitled
1.) The mind of the great sage of India is intimately conveyed from West to East.
I’m speaking to you. I’ve figured it out. We start with dying, with the end of things. I’m sitting lying on the wood floor of the apartment with no door and ten thousand cockroaches, and our not-speaking is contracting expanding fast as the universe [the end is beginning]. We’re living our lives backwards, days beg sun rising from where it set. Me forgetting your name before we’ve even met. I convey it to you now, intimately, your name, in case you forget—pearl wrapped it is a branch the ice relinquishes, a breaking sound. (In the center of a field, you are walking. Out through the white, traversing the untouched, through the trees you are walking, carefully between the trees, carefully as carelessly I left you. As carefully as then when I You walk far ahead Even now, carefully, I fit my feet into the soft blue holes of your footprints.) [I start there.] Begin with the dying, that with where we stand before birth it all, before we turn and barrel through the doorways of our mothers, back, as if we had forgotten something.
2.) The spiritual source shines clear in the light, the branching streams flow on in the darkness.
I once saw the place where a river began, water combing straight from the ground. Earlier that day I stood downriver, watched leaves float past like a hundred yellow boats, In that moment, and I knew I would return. You would not be there, and your absence would be like God. [You would have left some things…a little wooden mask, a petal-shaped guitar pick. Frayed cloth, and a stopped clock. And Your touch would flow on in them, fracturing into many little myriad the tiniest a million black brooks.]
Placeholder date if desired
Process Statement
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Lindsay Stuart Hill’s first full-length poetry collection, World of Dew (2025), won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, and The Southern Review, among other publications. She received her MFA from the University of Virginia, where she was the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize. More at www.lindsaystuarthill.com.
From World of Dew by Lindsay Stuart Hill. Reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. © 2025 by Lindsay Stuart Hill. All rights reserved.
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