In the Beginning, There Was the Light

Felix Cortes

From my earliest memory,
what looms and envelops
is the light,
saturating
and blinding,
warming
and reassuring,
revealing
and guiding,
with its life-charging
pulse.

These were the beginnings:
a small furnished room,
a crib bathed in luminescence,
a cosmic tunnel
of light
flooding through
the window,
the suspended
particles of dust
so many dancing worlds alit,
miniscule projections
of the giant orbs beyond.

It’s an intimate memory,
with the palpable feel
of having been lived,
but I see it from outside myself.
I’m not yet two;
Pupo, yet unborn.

Another flashback resolves
through Mami’s eyes:
I pull up the chair
to just under the hammock
cradling the newborn Pupo.
I climb up, stretch my body,
and reach with my head,
looking to knock him off
my hammock.
Bad enough having to share Mami.
But soon I’d defend him
against little would-be bullies.

Other reminiscences unfold
bathed in daylight,
played out in street scenes, like:

Going down a midtown sidewalk,
I goggle in awe
at the lost peaks of skyscrapers
piercing a clear blue sky.
Mami, self-conscious,
barks at me from under her breath
to stop staring
like a wonderstruck hick,
¡caramba!

A summer day of 1957,
our block in the Barrio
flushed in daylight and alive—
tops, marbles, and Spaldings
bouncing off stoop step edges.

Strolling down 116th,
heartbeat of the Barrio’s Marqueta,
perusing the wares,
Puerto Rican mothers
haggling with Jewish merchants
in the time-honored tradition
of working people.

Family country outings
to upstate Las Villas or El Duco’s,
grooming and training race horses in New Jersey.
Lucent August skies; embracing, life-affirming green—
nostalgic snatch of the Island.          

Later, finding myself,
the five-mile mid-afternoon treks
between home and Times Square,
brisk pace, youthful, intimate reflection.

Memory’s daylight
is especially brilliant,
tinged in affection,
stories, and warmth.
Its glow from the past
yet reaches us,
covering us
in our first innocence,
our earliest sense of wonder
when everything was new.

Dawn of my infancy,
engulf me, for a suspended moment,
in the memory
of first light,
newborn wonderment,
bright emerging life.

Oh, pulsing, dazzling radiance!

Copyright © 2024 by Felix Cortes. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 2, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

more poetry

about this poem

“The piece is self-explanatory: a sort of poetic autobiography of the early part of my life. Memory is one of the constant themes in my writing. ‘In the Beginning, There was the Light’ was inspired by the powerful recollection/image of sunlight seeming to shine on my crib. This image must have been born in reality and shaped by dream. It seems so because, in my mind, I see the window and the light coming through (reality), but I also see myself as a toddler in the crib (dream), but who knows... It’s a memory that has been with me throughout my conscious life.”
—Felix Cortes

related poems

this month’s guest editor

Thanks to Victor Hernández Cruz, author of Beneath the Spanish (Coffee House Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read or listen to a Q&A about Hernández Cruz’s curatorial approach and find out more about our Guest Editors for the year.

support poem-a-day

“Poem-a-Day is brilliant because it makes space in the everyday racket for something as meaningful as a poem.” —Tracy K. Smith

If this series is meaningful to you, join the community of Poem-a-Day supporters by making a gift today. Now serving more than 320,000 daily subscribers, this publication is only possible thanks to the contributions of readers like you.