Darkness Falls - Nov 2 2022

 

Darkness Falls

Nov 2 2022

Darkness falls slowly

then all of a sudden.

I notice this, sitting in my easy chair,

lights off

shades up

looking outside.

I'm tempted to metaphor;

does everything happen like this?

A tipping point,

then unstoppable slide

all the way down.

Except the planet turns

stars appear

the moon shines.

And then, sunrise;

a clockwork universe,

more sine wave

than descending line.

So even if history doesn't repeat

it surely rhymes.

And where am I

between endless night

and the promise of dawn?

As a congenital pessimist

I know which metaphor

resonates most powerfully   —

   —  darkness

disaster

from bad to worse.

Irreversibly so.

The world, plunged into darkness

because we failed to learn.

One of those over-caffeinated days I'm not ready to stop writing. Unfortunately, reading one too many Atlantic articles about war, climate change, conspiracy theorists, and democracy in peril leads to poems like this!