The shadows of the night claw desperately to these rocks,
Roiling in fear at the thought of the breaking of Day
As it pours blinding light and heat over the soil and moss,
Rending the darkness into pieces,
Exploding the monsters to nothingness,
Squeezing rainbows into the dewdrops
Before wiping them up and consigning them to feral history.
These grey-green morning mists choke the earth
Before they are made pure white
And are scorched from the fear-ridden valleys
In a wet, silken steam pierced and suffused
By sunbeam spears that deliver
A final thrust in Night's final throes.
The bruised skies overhead await the arrival anxiously,
The starry guardians of those lost in the nightmare
Wink out, the watchlight lanterns gone from their stations,
And no creature stirs before this pre-dawn audience,
The ghouls glaring down into the amphitheatre,
The ghosts silently moaning as they tremble,
The poltergeists bound in their rage,
That one more hour was not theirs.
Earth groans.
Barren, desolate,
Spirit-bound,
Spectre-ridden,
Mist-bound,
Memory-ridden,
Fear-bound,
And self-loathing seeps in all directions,
Fear-sodden reeking soil, a mire of wishing for death.
And then the skies, in their paling colour,
A growing wan of pastel lightening,
Heave and groan as the sun breaks
Through monstrous, swollen clouds,
Rays of golden, powerful arrows,
Blinding sword-strokes of flaming steel
Cutting down the hedges of fear
And exposing the final denisons of Night
In a single, majestic, universe-heavy thrust.
The last nightmares gallop away
As dawn is poured over the lands,
The foul bogs and stinking carcasses are kissed
With a joy that calls forth the once-lost seedlings
Of tiny flowers, of fruit trees and fragrant shrubs.
And I lie, fear-racked, in this pre-dawn, heaving darkness,
Waiting for the breaking of your smile
To pour over my sorrowful night
And bring forth whatever joy
Could rise from this steaming, stinking, barren earth
That I have become.
Chase the night shadows from my life
With your smile,
And I shall grow and blossom
And learn to love
Under your caress.