Hopper light or Turner light
or Caravaggio light: I mean
pillowed clouds bright in one
corner of the sky or sunbeams
bisecting a room to end on a pair
of wearied eyes or even, through
a window, the radiant lonely glow
that falls on residents of the Midwest
and isn’t it a miracle that anyone
manages to catch light in a puddle
of oil and pigment smeared across
cotton canvas in such a way
that we not only recognize the light
and wonder depicted there but
the tones and hues, too, ones these
painters manifest from fine dust,
this singular source of our heart’s
appeal for recognition, for anything
we might know and how we share
the days caught in those frames
or think we do or think, somehow,
this particular moment’s an instant
we might belong to, now or in
the past, a private time and place
where we can retreat, a pause
where we can hide for days
because the luster of the world
reveals itself in steady warmth
and who wouldn’t want to live
where the bright light shines?
A former bar owner, SM Stubbs was born & raised in south Florida. His first book, Learning to Drown (Gunpowder Press), was released in January 2025. He has been on scholarship and on staff at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference; and won the 2019 Rose Warner Poetry Prize. His work has appeared in numerous magazines, including Poetry Northwest, Puerto del Sol, Carolina Quarterly, New Ohio Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Crab Creek Review, Cimarron Review, andThe Rumpus.