Present Without Presence

It does not arrive.
It seeps.
It creeps.
It envelops the moment
without a beginning,
without an end.

A shading.
A weight without name.
Something here
before the knowing of it.

Not the dark of absence.
Not the dark that asks to be feared.
A dim.
A whispering, not a calling.
Waiting to be noticed.
Perhaps acknowledged.
Maybe understood.

And inside it,
a sliver.
Not bright enough to glimmer.
Not enough to illuminate.
Enough only to know
that somewhere,
not here,
there is light.

Or perhaps it is closer than that.
Perhaps it is something
I have forgotten.
Perhaps it is something
I have not yet learned
to recognize.
The light is not in the moment.
The knowing of light
is the light.