Stratford's First Poet Laureate, David Stones, wrote this poem for our annual Lights of Love Lighting & Remembrance Ceremony. David graciously read this poem aloud for those gathered on November 21, 2025.

We are told of how
creation expelled the darkness
and that it was good.
And ever since, I think,
we have chased brightness.

Even in the despair
of our deepest valleys
when our hearts are pierced
and there is nothing
but the weight of rain,
we pursue the luminescence
that gilds the beating heart
of everything.

We are by nature
seekers of radiance,
the gold within the igneous,
the luring halo
where the tunnel ends,
the alchemy of petals
chandeliered with dew.
We live inside this
heart-pump fuse of illumination.
As moths to flame
we lean into the glow,
for at its flaring core
we sense the kinship
of belonging
and how love
blazes.

In the lighting of things,
in the glimmer and glare
of this polished universe,
forgiveness gleams,
mercy beckons,
tenderness enfolds
and we breathe as one.

This is how we inhale light
and how light enters us,
the slow seep of love and caring,
like iridescence into the flower,
how stars embrace
and bloom the heavens.

And so we live on,
endlessly igniting candles
in the dark,
building the small fires
we pass from palm to palm,
the love that will endure,
the light we are determined
must burn forever.