What is it with light
I mean the kind that struggles through
My city window in winter
Spare and shy
& Then the dark how it creeps in
Shoves the spark away
& I remember
My aging body is not a sun
Will not be returned someday
Well here I am Shekhinah. I am asking you:
Wrap me in your light one more time.
Let me wear the white shawl of light
For my child’s child and for the child
Still inside this old body.
Amy Small-McKinney
Amy Small-McKinney is the author of three chapbooks and three full-length poetry books, including her newest full-length, & You Think It Ends (Glass Lyre Press, 2025). Her book, Walking Toward Cranes, won The Kithara Book Prize (Glass Lyre, 2016). She has been published in numerous journals, for example, American Poetry Review, Ilanot Review, Minyan, The Nu Review, Tiferet, and Verse Daily, among others, as well as anthologies, including 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium (Ashland University). Her poetry has also been translated into Romanian and Korean. Small is a Montgomery County PA Poet Laureate Emeritus, 2011. January 2026, Small-McKinney taught a One Art virtual workshop: Speaking To & Listening To Our Aging Bodies.


