nightfallen

rough birch bark leans in silence
to the wood grove’s pitch-black dark
so falls dusk however temporary
till only fingertips can see
the invisible forest

animal noises rattle the broom pods
bending under stems furtively creeping
to ground in some black burrow
then soundless like a breath
gasped in the gape of night

so far from the hurried roads
of people and their converging
in the black dust of cities
stratagems and schemes
and sterile homes

there are laws of commodities and things
which no small beast nor creature
cares for nor yet obeys here
among grass-grown stones
no law here but nature

but people accumulate like silt or sediment
flushed by rain into huddled townships
banked and drifted debris
they are fugitive droplets
out of unseen skies

what is right and proper twists them
skews sense till only streetscapes
doorways and high-roofed dwellings
configure what the heart desires
what is understood

even in daylight should it dawn
trees stand grim and pitiless just
as well lost with night-fled black
what grows what darts among them
to be culled like vermin

these people
might as well be blind
blinded by light
so shrouded
by the cramped
and narrow world
or dulled by ebbing dusk
till sunlessness is a defect
of the soul a lack of spirit

eyes that see can still see nothing

© BH, 2016

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Another dark night (of the soul)? I don’t think so. It’s about darkness of a different kind, about seeing and not seeing. It’s a current theme for me…

…about perception, and a more naturalistic cousin to the poem Retina which I wrote after this one.

We see the world as our minds imagine it to be. It’s true, I say!