If There's a Hell

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.