Darklight #poetry #earthweal

‘What then is this wild dark?’
The question: my reply
‘It is a shining sea
sunless, whose plumbless depths
reach downwards to fathom infinity’

Its edges, silvered, shiver through my soul
I am set free
I face the darkness:
it does not diminish me

‘I’m all adrift in blackness’ I cry
find you holding me
we’re afloat
alight
at creation’s obscured boundary

I take a breath and dive
a thousand thousand shimmering things 
with shapeless forms
envelop me
I writhe, break free, emerge
exhaling poetry.

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Written for earthweal

In this week’s challenge, Brendan explores The Wild Dark:

The dark is the source of mantic inspiration, the dead are the carriers of deep tradition, and poetry is the green fire of dark knowledge. The procedure for gaining poetic inspiration was clearly a burial and a rebirth.

He poses the question which I have used for the opening line of my poem. It makes me realise that perhaps I should be grateful for my PMDD, which gives me the experience of facing extreme darkness on a regular, cyclical basis. I come up singing. See also The Place Where Poetry is Born.

If you enjoyed this poem, please consider supporting my work by buying my book, 40 Poems at 40!

Shaky camerawork but…wow!

66 thoughts on “Darklight #poetry #earthweal

Add yours

  1. An intriguing voyage deep beyond the darkness and then diving into a thousand thousand shimmering things and emerging breathing fantastic lines of poetry … well then .. I’ll send you my favourite poet/singer/songwriter, Leonard Cohen, singing his incredible poem “A Thousand Kisses Deep”…
    https://youtu.be/M1mkFKVns6U

  2. For all their misery and near-fatal (and sometimes too fatal) drownings, I’ve come to think that our worst wounds are also our most vital wombs, for poetry for sure but the deep spirit who lives in us … My alcoholism is shamanic in that those darkest places I hurled myself was a seeking for transformation which, if I could survive the initiation, became an enduring source of lucency. The poem here is the surest example of it. No one would wish the condition but what poetry comes up as a result. Life throws us a lot of bad crab, drowning deeps, dark stuff: learning to sing it, negotiate it, follow where it leads, listen: that’s the singing dark mind that sustains poetry, I think. Thanks so for bringin’ it to earthweal. (The jellyfish in the image is such a powerful imago for noir fire!)

    1. I am glad you managed to find a moment of calm, and appreciated my poem. I have been struggling, but today I found some peace of mind also ❤️

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