The Pretext of Darkness

The Pretext of Darknesss

Under my solitary lamp

A poem pulls at the periphery of thought,

Begging to be birthed.

I own the night—or am I the owned?

I am wearied by obligatory tasks;

The ‘I shoulds’ of a silent night.

Perhaps I should greet silence

With Silence.

Or converse with the unseen Divine.

The night owns me.

The Ruler of the Night trumps the uninvited Pretender

Who claims rights as well.

My mind is a stranger to poetry,

Having left it in some furrow along my path

Does it spring up? Like the Sower’s seed?

“Take care, friend, that the seed you sow

Is not met by tangles of human frailty,

Dark imaginings,

Or pain. 

Take care that the mockery or censure of spirits

Does not snatch the seed as it falls, like hungry ravens

Quoting ‘nevermore.’

Wait, rather, for the soft whisper

The familiar ineffable, wholly “Other”

Who waits quietly

To have His say; To stake his claim

To the darkness of this ceaseless night.

When you are owned by the Light

Dark paths matter not….

When the traveler of the spheres

Holds one’s hand, Darkness flees

Though the night be prolonged.

So, hope yet in the dawn,

And permit the poem to be spawned.

Here in the small circle of lamplight

A chronicle of Life in the pretext of Death.

Cynthia Lott Vogel

1-20-15

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