Nothing We Know
Michael T. Young

“This then is the message which we have
heard of him, and declare unto you, that God
is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”
—I John 1:5

Darkness is cliché, the common element,
more common than the air we breathe.
Many of us are sitting in it right now,
maybe you who read this, maybe me.
It’s hard to know. Though most of the time
it’s clear but not in the way the
Caribbean Sea is clear. Because we wander
together in the same darkness we think
we know our way. But we collide
with others in their own darkness. Apologize.
Move on. Then one day we see it, a star,
a point of light that is like nothing we know,
or could have known in all our drifting
and for the first time, we have direction.

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Michael T. Young’s Comments

This was one of those poems that snuck up on me. The first line came to me while reading. I jotted it down and a few days later wrote the poem. But it touches on an issue that’s been on my mind for several years. The world is a spiritually dark place and our ability to see beyond that is basically zero because our whole being is conditioned by that darkness. We need something beyond that condition to guide us. I would say that’s God.

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