Apricity and Louise Glück’s Vespers
I learned a new word recently: “apricity” — it is archaic, a noun, meaning “the warmth of the sun in winter.” Like all things known, “apricity” describes a feeling which has existed long before it was named. Now, solidified in language, its presence in my life has become inescapable; as soon as I feel its warmth against my neck, peripheral perception is transformed into immediate, tangible recognition.
Even as you appeared to Moses, because / I need you, you appear to me, not / often, however. I live essentially / in darkness. You are perhaps training me to be / responsive to the slightest brightening.
Like Louise Glück in this poem, at the slightest brightening I seek to position myself in divinity’s direct path. Last autumn, at the turning of the season — when the leaves and sun began to fall faster, and duller dawns warned of a waxing scarcity — I began to forage for apricity. Following a summer of disconnection, inspection, and self-severity, any semblance of identity felt splintered from sacredness. During those days, when desecration felt most divisive, I shouldered on an oversized coat, locked the door, and set out to recover that almost-ash hearth of interconnectedness:
This afternoon / in the physical world to which you commonly / contribute your silence, I climbed / the small hill above the wild blueberries . . . / . . . As you anticipated, / I did not look up. So you came down to me: / at my feet, not the wax / leaves of the wild blueberry, but your fiery self, a whole / pasture of fire, and beyond, the red sun neither failing nor rising — / I was not a child; I could take advantage of illusions.
After four years of studying God and training my thoughts to raise to heaven, I am convinced I can only ascend as far as my step can defy gravity. I remember pausing in a grove of trees to witness the setting sun’s light explode through the branches like shrapnel. Eyes closed, I was welcomed into the common holiness of things. It was an ancient feeling — warm; requiring nothing from me except my attention.
-Marlee Baker
