for you, i'd be happy to repeat myself forever

Poem for the Name Mary
by Mark Cox

Like smoke in a bottle, like
hunger, sometimes light fits,
wraps itself around a person
or thing and doesn't let go.
The light becomes a name,
and that name becomes a voice
through which light speaks to us.
Maybe this is what a friend means
when she says there is a pair of lips
in the air, maybe this is desire
and need too. Or maybe
this is just how to love a potato,
how to see what the potato sees:
the childish, white arms that reach out
through it's eyes into the dark of our cabinets
to bless them.