The sewing needle I thread to fix
my boy’s belt loop
drops from my fingers and
vanishes
into the beige bathroom rug,
impossible to find until
I flick on the ceiling lamp and
instantly
a silver streak lights up that needle
like a stage spotlight.
I have learned that light consists
of tiny photons, each one racing off
in every direction
forever
and each one holds a record
of where it’s been, like a postcard stamped
with the return address of a star or a moon
or a ceiling lamp
that my eyes read in a language
I don’t know I know
and suddenly—needle…. there.
A miracle the universe sends
messages all the time, telling me
Look, this is what’s here,
this is what’s real,
this is what you belong to.
The real miracle though isn’t the light
but that there’s a me
to surmise the wink on the floor.
