I Face the Shadows
A poem.
I face the shadows,
Their faces rising from quicksand,
And their voices,
Psithurisms in the dark.
I face the telling of their midnight stories,
Fear —
A beleaguered imagination,
Their faces dovetailing with the woods that I’ve left behind.
I must listen to their stories of boldness,
The bravery of women who’ve succumbed,
Or of men and what they’ve had to lose,
Eyes open, ears set free,
Whispering like a breeze in my face,
The thing that I must face,
How did the child die in me?
And why did I not face her death, her flurried ashes?
Those questions of youth,
Curiosities of longing,
The forlorn war that stands ahead,
The internecine war of those unnamed creatures turned away from—
Now I ask,
Now I question,
Now I wonder,
Even more wide-eyed than I had been before.
