The Pit and the Star

Standing in light, I gazed into a hole,
and saw nothing but dark.
The light was everywhere,
unsuspicious, ordinary,
but the adventure tempted me.

So I ventured.
Fell slowly at first,
then freely,
and the light above me shrank
from sky to circle to coin to star.
At the bottom I halted
and looked up.

That same light,
no longer everywhere,
no longer ordinary,
reduced to a mere star,
showed me everything.

The dark walls
I could not see from above
now caught its glimmer.
Every crack, every edge
of the darkness,
I see it all.

It was never the darkness
that hid the truth.
It was the light,
too much of it,
to see by.

From the pit, the starlight is enough.