Concealing the unknown

Stealing sight

Hiding who-knows-what

In the night, is

The Dark.

The Dark that lies across the land

That pools beneath the bed

That stretches at the edge of light

Into the great unknown,

I cannot see clearly in The Dark

And flickers in its shadows’ queer

Inspire the imagination

Figments of the unknown rousing fear,

Are there monsters in the shadows

Are there wolves beneath my bed

Are there creatures deranged

Waiting to attack and rend?

Are the predators that prowl

In The Dark of the night

Watching me with superior vision

As I stare unseeing with eyes wide?

Are we eye to eye

Do I unknowing meet their gaze

Or are the shadows empty

And all my fear a senseless haze?

But time and time again I go

Out into The Dark

Facing fear and reaching

Out to the world with other senses,

Learning to see without looking

To watch without staring

Lest a shadow become

A monster in my mind,

I went into the forest

To gather data for a science project

From the beach beyond

Just a jumpy high schooler,

In The Dark of the forest

My flashlight barely

Finding the trail

As it turned me into a beacon,

Casting shadows I refused to flee

Making the shadows beyond its light

That much more impenetrable

That much spookier in the night,

Still I walked alone

I persevered

Through the darkened forest

Unto the beach,

Where light unfiltered

Reached me across the water

From celestial sources

And human pollution,

And I took the beach

I took the road

Back home without again confronting

The forest’s Dark,

Until the next time

And the next

As I trained myself

To live past fear.

As the years turned I came

To embrace a form of Dark

That which conceals

The world and me,

It grants peace

To gaze upon nothing

To know that human eyes

Fall not upon me,

It is soothing to rest

In the cloak of The Dark

To let diurnal cares slip away

To be myself unseen,

Still the fear is waiting

And the more The Dark’s unknown

The more the fear grips me

When I am all alone,

But I brush off its paltry efforts

I push past the speeding of my heart

I now know love as well as fear

For the embrace of The Dark.