Sorrow, the name you wear
When darkness falls
Covering your sunshine
Holding your happiness at bay
Loneliness, the face you share
When parts of you disappear
Like some lost ghost
Filling your soul with emptiness
Despair, last words you speak
When all else fails
Leaving you close to the edge
That narrow path your life walks
Then, for no reason
Except nothing else is left
Hope reappears
Taking away all that cries inside you
Something wild rages
just out of reach of the sun’s touch
and beyond the moon’s forever lost call
An unspeakable wildness somehow we know
And down below, and beyond
the incarnate always walk alone, and dance
at midnight with the eternal flame
extinguishing the inner darkness
And in those shadows
the empty hollows fill with twilight’s wonders
and silence clings to our soul
like dreams to our first waking breath
And should danger appear, remember:
He that dwelleth in the secret place
of the most High shall abide
under the shadow of the Alimighty
Footnote: Last stanza from Psalms 91:1
Throughout the night
moonlight swept through long dark trees
standing deathly still
waiting for morning’s quiet return
Near the creek
high above the forest bed
a familiar barred owl calls out
claiming stray moonbeams his prey
Ghost-like, shadows hover
between trees and beyond
to places figured lost
save their fortuitous lingering
Somewhere, in the spaces between
what’s known and what can never be found
the night slips into my soul, and
so shall I also wait for morning’s light
Poetic Alchemist 