darkness is always there

natalia jakubek / requiem

 

I have studied

and become intimate with

 the speed of darkness. It’s so fast it’s

always here. When the light withdraws

the dark comes from no place. It always lives

with us. Your heart and brain are black.

They never see the true light except in violence

or autopsy. Of course the brain can cast

its own blinding light that we wait for in a poem,

at least blinding to us. In our trances the loves

of long ago enter the room unescorted, silent

perhaps from the black bottom of the ocean

where we all die in perfect darkness, a sense

of whirling that recedes back to the time

the ocean swallowed the smallest stars

then heated us into our early life.

Darkness is always there,

it only stands

revealed.

 

Jim Harrison