A Noose of Light

"...being alive, isn’t that the hardest joy?"
                                        - Chen Chen


A poet wrote of the noose of catastrophe
looping and lowering around each brush
fire, each flood; each site of shooting,
mauling, erasure, loss. I do not think 
she meant ropes fashioned of stars, or stars
festooned across a summer lawn, edging 
our fences. This is not the noose a farmer 
might drape around the neck of a cow, bell 
tinkling as he leads it  away from the pasture,
back into the barn. I know it seems hard to find
a noose of light that needs no other reason, really, 
to fall around you, other than that's what it's meant 
to do.  But I have to imagine  such light exists, 
to which I'd willingly give myself; surrender.