Carol Ann Duffy - The Light Gatherer lyrics

When you were small, your cupped palms each held a candlesworth under your skin, enough to begin, and as you grew light gathered in you, two clear raindrops in your eyes, warm pearls, shy, in the lobes of your ears, even always the light of a smile after your tears. Your kissed feet glowed in my one hand, or I'd enter a room to see the corner you played in lit like a stage set, the crown of your bowed head spotlit. When language came, it glittered like a river, silver, clever with fish, and you slept with the whole moon held in your arms for a night light where I knelt watching. Light gatherer. You fell from a star into my lap, the soft lamp at the bedside mirrored in you, and now you shine like a snowgirl, a bu*tercup under a chin, the wide blue yonder you squeal at and fly in, like a j**elled cave, turquoise and diamond and gold, opening out at the end of a tunnel of years.