Poem: Hidden In Light

Hidden In Light

She stands like bamboo stands—

vertical, and against a wall

with the gravel at her feet.

(Always the light comes from the wrong direction.)

From a distance she seems composed,

and from a distance, everything is.

But come closer.

Find the crux—

the hinged recess where her body

decides to live on,

where everything that becomes a branch

is still just the bearing,

still just heat under her skin.

That is where the woman lives.

Not in the form seen on the street.

In the joint—

the amber and coarse interior—

inside the seconds just before the split

when she was still

brave and undivided.

This is what it is to be a woman:

to be seen as a system or design,

and to know yourself as a process instead—

to hold vertical lines

while something at the center branches,

and keeps deciding,

and keeps asking which way,

and it knows where the light comes from.

Marni Fraser

0612.2026

‘Hidden In Light’ | 06.2026