"Darkness" by Sharon Scholl
Poetry
Darkness
The cliché moment of the cave tour –
when lights click off and the crowd gasps
in awe as suddenly everything is gone.
Few of us see dark like this, so profound
that we must breathe hard or slap ourselves
to believe we are still here.
Our ancestors feared the dark, fought it off
with firelight and a bed of seething coals,
feeling safe within its bright perimeter.
Our comfort is the blinking horde of tiny bulbs,
those wakeful guardians, the night watch
assigned to each electrical convenience.
Small, friendly dots of light decorate the darkness,
prevent the black devouring, allay our mute
terror of flicking suddenly into nothing.
Sharon Scholl is a retired college teacher (Humanities) who convenes a poetry critique group and maintains a website, freeprintmusic.com, that donates her compositions to small Libeal churches. Her poetry collections, Seasons, Remains,Classifieds, Ghosts, are availabe via Amazon Books. Her poems are current in Sligo Press and Sea Crow Press periodicals.