Mottled light is light slipping through leaves on a tree,
Or through a gauzy, crocheted curtain in your old aunt's house,
Through a screen door accidentally left open,
Through the small, square portals
Made by the latticed lath of an outdoor trellis.

When mottled light eases through the barricades,
Foliage, a wall, a passing person
Soften beneath the random, patterned pieces of beckoning light
That caresses whatever it falls upon, then enlightens
And releases its spirit in such a tender way
That you, the onlooker, never before having noticed
The supple grace and exactness of the moment,
Become breathless, stunned, almost alarmed by a dizzying calm.

Mottled light transforms its willing prey
Into something wholly other than it had ever been,
A transfigured thing or person, alive and fresh to an open eye,
Never seen that way before
And perhaps, never again.

Those capricious bits of light choose odd areas to illuminate;
An elbow, a belt buckle, a patch of grass,
A shoulder, just before its inward turn,
The peaceful, flopping tail of a sleeping dog
Swaying in and out of light and shade,
The glowing edge of a fading rose,
A rust stain on an old shoe.

© 2003 ___Muldoon Elder