Still the Sun

the hill where I stood

and waited for reason

to come in its season

~

looking upon the world

with a warring sense

of unease and hope

~

...what was it Thomas said?

"old age should burn

and rave at close of day"

~

are we destined to live

and die, walk the line

and fall at the final post?

~

triviality of existence should never

be trivialised, yet,

it should never be overanalysed

~

or given the same fretted concern

as you would something more important

the sum of the parts — the journey

to death from our emergence from

the loins of our mothers

~

I set out on this walk

when I started, I don't know,

to descend into the denser woodland

~

deciduous greenery arching over me,

branches and limbs

crossing the paths to take me captive

~

their attempts reigniting

my sense of purpose — my sense of

anything other than just the ordinary

~

the mundanity that echoes and mirrors

the mundanity of so many others

on this corporeal mortal course

~

I recall my own previous encounters

on the road with worn and weary travellers

each of which offered both profound sage wisdom

and words that amounted to nothing

but plateau platitudes

~

I keep as my mantle,

as my creed,

the words of Cummings:

"nothing which we are to perceive in this world

equals the power of your intense fragility"

~

that weakened state — the state

of human decline

from the moment we crown to the final breath —

is not actually a weakened state

it's a call to make or break,

to do or not do,

to can or can't...

~

and still the sun...

~

...is high above our shared skies

and it brings a smile to my crestfallen face

though the birds glide, sing, feast and squawk

and, yes, it raises my spirits a little higher

~

I can't help but see the dark cloud, the void

just there in the distance (pointing forward)

(pointing towards the horizon)

(the horizon where night is prepared to order)

~

the void is ever present, and any pretence

that it isn't, or that bright days, sunshine

and the song of the birds can delay or disguise

is a painfully vain exercise

~

in taking the mundane and fighting the electric —

the electric emotional turmoil of the blackness

the blackness we all must face, fall to, or fail

fail to gain mastery...

*

Thanks for reading!

Author's Notes: This is for the "Somewhere Between Here and There" Challenge as part of the Vocal+ Summer Writing Series. It references Dylan Thomas's powerful villanelle, "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," and E.E. Cummings's beautiful, "somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond." For additional reference, it contains a poem that was not accepted by Rattle Poetry.

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