Meditações - the time falling away from the clock's circular face

Forgiving the Darkness

Darkness is not a death, does not obliterate,

will not bury you or take your breath away.

Darkness will not erase you the way it erases day with night

because darkness is not the clock but merely the time

falling away from the clock's circular face.

Darkness is not the loss but the thing misplaced,

not the hammer but the nail in its curved emergence

from wood's grasp, not the storm's insurgence

but the limbs broken off from their miraculous

suspension in a storm out far, beyond us.

Darkness is not about hearts, imperfect as they are,

but what leaks through their incorrigible doors, not the stars

but the glissade or glide of their dust.

Darkness no longer shields the hunters' musk

in search of you, or turns you to animal prey,

it is only a measure of weight or days.

Not something without a beginning or an end,

it is not even—especially not—an end.

Nor is it vertigo, nor the whole, but merely a piece.

No, darkness is but a ghost of an idea, the least

remembered, most estranged prayer, and your fear

but a lingering, limbic fear torn from shreds of forgotten years.

Only that much is clear.

Alice B. Fogel