If there’s a hell in which I find
myself
at the end of my life for sins
unconfessed
and taken to my grave, it will be a
dark room,
expansive and immense, completely dark
without so much as a distant star
to light my way,
nor walls to grasp and grope in the
blackness,
the darkest pitch giving sound to
the voices
in my head, those same voices that
haunt the dark
that I fear even now, still alive
and present
for redemption, a darkness easily
overcome with the flick
of a switch or a candle lit, giving
light
to the ghosts and ghouls and things
that go bump in the night,
driving out my fear, squelched in
the light of day;
but the experts say we need the
dark,
even as we need the light, to
reflect upon and find
our place in the universe measured
against a deep night
with the Milky Way over our heads,
lost in the stars,
so the dog and I, tethered
together,
leash in one hand and sturdy
flashlight in the other
- six volts of power to light our
way -
venture out into the dark of a moonless
night,
to confront the universe and
ourselves, and the voices
calling out from the woods
surrounding us, dark and deep.
Our light provides a small circle
of safety around us,
to guide our steps forward, lighting
the darkness ahead, barely,
and leaving a trail of shadow
behind us, enclosing us
and holding at bay our fears at the
unseen noises calling out,
noises, rationally, we know aren’t
there,
are nothing but the ice melting or
leaves falling,
perhaps a deer or foxes crossing at
a safe distance,
unaffected by our intrusion, but I
turn my light
to search, for proof, proof it’s
not what I fear
it is in the darkness swarming
around me, snapping,
calling out, and lurking in the
shadows to drag me away,
but find instead only the woods,
dimly lit and silent,
quiet in my passing, at peace in
itself in hushed darkness;
and in the clearing, a field we
know well
in daylight’s sunshine, the night
sky
stretches out to eternity above us,
a galaxy of stars, home, we’ve been
told,
to earth’s billions, I but one of the
many living here,
small and tentative, awed, lost and
looking up,
the dog still beside me, quiet and
still and small herself,
knowing, perhaps, what I don’t,
can’t seem to grasp,
she and I just a single speck, standing
here unseen and unheard
from the Milky Way’s distant shore,
far away, light years
across this milky river of stars we
inhabit,
and I turn off my light, a silent
click, and let the darkness
I fear envelop me, take me into
itself,
a moment of panic passing, gone
as fast as a light extinguished,
a light absorbed into the darkness
and reflected back, perhaps, in a
star,
a faint glimmer reflecting me, a
single star shining
in a field of stars at the end of
every darkness;
the darkness fades, standing here, pales
into billions of stars,
billions upon billions amassed into
this one galaxy,
this Milky Way shrinking me, made
smaller by its vastness,
my fears, of noises calling out, of
ghosts and ghouls
and unseen voices lurking to drag
me away, so miniscule
in this star-filled clearing
stretching to eternity,
my own light, short-lived and
reflected, a faint light
shining in the darkness fading
around me.
So we venture out now, the dog and
I, most nights,
tethered together, safe in our circle
of light
but less afraid these days of the
darkness around us,
the unseen noises calling out, the
ice melting
or leaves falling, a deer or foxes crossing
at a distance,
unaffected, for in the woods, dimly
lit and silent,
I have found my place among the
stars,
my life absorbed into the darkness
and reflected back
from a single star small among
billions, a single star
reflecting me, quiet and silent and redeemed.
