A Higher Height

“Turn the lights on baby
Let them shine
Oh baby turn the lights on”
Turn the Lights On – Big Sugar

Cue the music, and the years slip
away to a time when I learned
that eyes could pull me in,
pull me out of the darkness

that had such a grip on me,
take me from my lowest low
to a high that, even now,
seems endless.

Back to a time of touch
that was too infrequent
and long-distant longing
that was unbearable.

When playlists filled the space
between words until the space
between us was removed
by the move that brought us together,

miles no longer between us,
forward to a time when
we each can feel the room
light up when the other enters.

Transplanted from Western New York, Ken Gierke is retired and has lived in Missouri since 2012. He was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and his writing has appeared as two micro-chapbooks from Origami Poems Project, as well as in several print anthologies. His writing has been featured online by Trailer Park Quarterly, Amethyst Review, Silver Birch Press, As It Ought to Be Magazine, and the Ekphrastic Review. His poetry collections, Glass Awash (2022), Heron Spirit (2024), and Random Riffs (2025) were published by Spartan Press, with The Long Haul forthcoming. His website: https://rivrvlogr.com/