Extinguished

Dec 3 2012

There are still dark places

left in the world.

Where no man-made light

diffuses through the murk.

And where I try to believe

nature won;

the planet survived us,

we succumbed

to our greed.

And me, an accidental witness.

To stars

that have never been seen.

Black,

too deep to bear description.

The aurora, its magic restored

from the cold reduction of physics.

You get to such places

by human-powered means.

Past the end of the road.

In nifty boats

you can paddle, and carry.

Where you extinguish

all artificial light,

learn to see in the dark

feel your way,

cultivate

your 6th sense

and intuition.

And listen, of course.

Because the world is never still,

especially when you quiet yourself

pause long enough to hear.

Crashing through the wilds

‘til I stop.

Which is when I look up

at a clear night sky

unobscured by light,

and feel myself shrink

to insignificance.

So when the last dark place is gone

the night sky lost,

will my cosmos contract

to a dull uniform glow

with nothing beyond?

And I
imagine myself a god

on a claustrophobic planet

circling a single sun?