The Darkness

I have been writing poetry on and off for a very long time, since my teenage years certainly and a little before then too.  It is nota process I can force, or decide to do. It just happens.  Generally during dark nights of the soul, or when I am experiencing some inner turmoil, or when I am inspired by some landscape or some energy, and the moment just takes me. 

I sometimes find words written on scrumpled pieces of paper in drawers long forgotten, and I wish I had dated them and made more sense of them at the time, jumbled as they are together now, words that flowed with wine, or with the mood of that time, that make sense in the darker moments of my life. We need the dark to find the light.

And sometimes it is in our darkest hours that the soul finds deeper expression.  Depression was my story for quite some time, many years it framed my life, my friend, who both enlightened me with the opportunity for moments of soulful connection and at times scared me with the depth of its dark despair. Spirit, heart and soul often depressed (body and mind too).  Depressed = made smaller and shrunk. But sometimes don't we have to shrink to expand again?

Moments of depression still arise.  They don't scare me now. I have made peace with them. But I do still have to catch myself and remind myself that this is part of the process of life.  My life. Our lives. For we must be in the dark to see the light. The soul is seeking further expression, that is all. Uncasing, uncasing, uncasing. And the heart, well the heart is healing to love more.

Here is a poem I wrote about those times:

There are cracks in my mind.

I can feel them.  Like paving slabs,

Drifting slowly apart.

My hopes and dreams slide down these cracks,

One

By

One.

In a steady stream,

Like water flowing over a

Ledge.

A waterfall in my head perhaps.

But there is no rainbow,

No sun and no place to call home.

And the only water (if there is any)

Tends to run endlessly down my cheeks.

I call it my pit of despair,

My darkness.

“The darkness has come again”.

It is a funny world, in my mind.

I hate it when the cracks appear.

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