Walking at Midnight. 

Dusk, and the streetlamps flicker silently on,
spots of brightness in a world slowly disappearing
into darkness.

You walk, past the lights, past the quarry,
beyond the edges of town,
to the dark places where silence reigns.

You stand, listening to the blank spaces,
to the beat of your own heart,
to the cacophony of emotions, wild and rarely, rarely tamed.

You stand, searching for courage
to beat back your fears for one more day,
to keep your heart open, to push back the night in your soul.

You become still as stone, listening for God,
for music no one hears, for your own voice,
so often lost in the day’s din,

And, finding it, you turn back. You walk
home. Past the town, past the streetlight,
suddenly dim next to the light within.

About this poem

This whole poem came because of the first line, which popped into my head as I looked at the photograph, taken during a dusk quarry walk a few weeks ago. My head was empty, sluggish and thick, so I just wrote the first line and rest came. It was not written, as much as allowed.

Tom