I walk down to the stream,
a ghost among the tendrils of mist
wakening from the moist air.
The half-moon gives a weak light to my feet,
but grows stronger
as the night rises
and shakes off the sleepiness of twilight.
Sitting on a rough stone,
I look into the shadows
and begin to think.
I pull out my flashlight, try to write,
then turn it off and stare at the stars.
Branches of the tree above me grasp at the wind.
I wrestle with much more,
but cannot grasp my thoughts
or the inconceivable movement
within my soul
any better than I can subjugate the bodiless air.
A melancholy that is not sorrow
settled on me a year ago
this night, in the dark of October's waning moon.
I stand up and leave the stone to wander.
I meet the banks of the shallow stream
and stand there for a while, empty.
There is nothing,
there has been nothing,
for twelve months
since I renounced my pain and bitterness.
Everyone tells you that somehow
love will find you
when you let go of hate.
Everyone is wrong.
The stars spin
in their slow, silent dance;
the highway sighs in the distance;
the moon rises slowly as it had done
for thousands of years.
"Speak!" I importune the stars.
They do not answer.
"Show me your light!" I implore the moon.
The moon hangs there,
still,
among the darkness of the stained sky.
"Answer!" I demand of the sky,
and the sky says nothing.
Twelve months of solitude,
of emptiness and silence,
hovering over the abyss.
I have looked into the abyss.
The abyss has looked into me.
And slowly, like the setting moon,
like the way a fever ends in peaceful sleep,
I begin to fall.