Ancient Lights

Photo by Timothée Duran on Unsplash

“The right of a building owner to the light received from and through his windows.” — Encyclopedia Brittanica

A Poem by Patty Seyburn

Common law from 1663. For 20 years, the landowner

owns that light, and you can’t build to obstruct it.

The theory: he (of course) acquired an easement,

a right to use part of your land for a specific purpose.

So you can own light, at least temporarily.

Americans don’t like this – much –

and the Fontainebleau Hotel lost its famous case

to the Eden Roc, both Art Deco splendors

in North Miami Beach, above my family’s pay-grade.

We stayed 150 blocks down Collins Avenue

at the Colonial Inn – snowbirds, 24 hours down

I-75 to Tampa from Detroit, more down

the Intercoastal highway. A kidney-shaped pool

with a 20-foot high-dive tapping into an ancient fear.

True ancient lights are probably stars or constellations

stitched into the sky like Peter Pan’s shadow, sewing

one of Wendy’s well-bred talents. If you could be

a fictional character, who would you be? Perhaps

her, brave enough to follow an adventure into

the ether, then brave enough to come home, guided by

the North Star, Polaris – though not too bright,

it maintains position in the firmament, owns space

the way you own a memory, which, though it

can ebb, cannot be given anyone else.

Patty Seyburn is a writer of poems and professor at California State University Long Beach. Her captivating style plunges readers into inquisitive passions and she views poetry as a vehicle to embrace the struggle of faith.

Read Threshold Delivery, Perfecta, Hilarity, Mechanical Cluster, or Diasporadic today.

Patty Seyburn has previously published five collections of poems: Threshold Delivery (Finishing Line Press, 2019); Perfecta (What Books Press, Glass Table Collective, 2014); Hilarity, (New Issues Press, 2009), Mechanical Cluster (Ohio State University Press, 2002) and Diasporadic (Helicon Nine Editions, 1998). She earned a BS and an MS in Journalism from Northwestern University, an MFA in Poetry from University of California, Irvine, and a Ph.D. in Poetry and Literature from the University of Houston. She is a professor at California State University, Long Beach.