Ghost Light
A guest post from poet, artist, and author Morgan Golladay:
For the last year I have been suffering from fluctuating exhaustion, primarily due to major surgery I had in August, preceded by related health issues and the formal launch of my first book. If you’ve read my blog or followed me on social media, the book was a Big Deal. I’m on my fifth career, this time as a writer — poetry and stories.
Our Delaware Press Association has an annual Communications Contest, open to all communicators in the state, regardless of media. There are awards for radio, television, podcasts, print media, graphics, books, poetry, short stories, essays, you get the drift.
I decided to enter this year, and since the restriction is for published material from the previous year, I entered my book of poetry, The Song of North Mountain, and Ghost Light, the title poem from this blog. Both of them won second place in their categories. (!!!!)
I discovered this yesterday afternoon. And I’m still chuffed beyond belief. Amazed. Stunned. Elated. In all honesty, there are days I feel absolutely prehistoric, creaky, slow, and dull. And then there are days like today when I feel like I’m All That AND a Bag of Chips.
Ghost Light:
Looking back along the ridge
a thin rib of light briefly
illuminates the forest floor
and silhouettes trees stark against winter sky.
Look too soon
and you miss the mystery
of Dillon’s Mountain’s brief farewell
to nightsky and stars and sweet Venus.
Look too late
and the slumbering giant
lumbers slowly
into its ordinary dayspring.
But if you should,
by chance or intent,
catch the moment,
you will see life
and hope
renewed
in a sudden shaft of dawnbreak.
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There are several things I like about this poem, besides the imagery. First is the internal rhyme scheme, ‘miss’ and ‘mystery,’ and ‘slumbering’ and ‘lumbers.’ The other is the poetic license of being able to create words, like nightsky, dayspring, dawnbreak.
One of the tools we can use as poets is using words to create an emotional response. In the first case of internal rhymes, there is a subtle “ah ha!,” especially when the poem is read aloud. These repeat rhymes were used to intentionally add the sense of calm to the poem.
With the creation of words through unlikely combination, there is a realization that what just happened was very sudden and surprising. This is a favorite way to catch the reader’s attention, to get them to pause, even momentarily, to reflect on what I meant by using that word. One of my favorite examples of using words well is the difference between ‘fat’ and ‘portly.’ The correct word can add a wealth of description, simply with one word. Think about the images individual words create: tall/spindly, cold/frigid, pitch black/dark, glowing/white hot.
As writers, we are storytellers, whether we write novels, essays, poems, short stories, or straight news articles. And we do it through words. When we hear wine-dark sea or twilight fading into night, we get the image quickly, and perchance, we remember.
The book, The Song of North Mountain, is available through Amazon, in paperback, kindle, and audiobook, through Barnes and Noble, and can be ordered through your local bookstore. It was also a National Book Award nominee. I wrote the poems n it, and illustrated the book as well.
And, please add a book review if you’re so minded; even an “I read this and loved it” will help!
You can find me on social media, in Facebook as Morgan Golladay Writer and Artist, in Instagram as morgangi13, and my website, morgangolladay.com.
Originally published at http://morgangolladay.wordpress.com on April 15, 2025.
