Elemental Enquiry

by Christine Irving

    …the light,
    once in, bounces
    toward the interior,
    glancing off…
         ~Kay Ryan, The Light of Interiors

What if light’s peculiar aptitude
to alter form from wave to particle 
and back again, derives from loneliness—
the way Lucifer, alone in the dark,
is said to have invented light?

And if no other, existed anywhere— 
unless you had some mud or a soccer
ball— wouldn’t a mirror be preferable? 

Every photon reflecting itself till stars appear, 
galaxies explode in swirling clouds of color, 
and planets pull out particles from passing solar 
winds to green each barren outcrop?

Would it be enough? Or might 
light revisit mud— needing 
something elemental as itself, strange
and different as darkness— refusing 
reflection; offering infinite 
enigmas in its place?