Night Dance

Night falls quickly here
in the mountains you call home,
a flash of color
and then darkness, long and black,
the sky filled with stars, winds,
and the sounds of coyotes yipping
through the hills.

You have gathered wood,
lit the fire against the night
in an attempt to hold the darkness at bay,
vain perhaps, for it returns each dusk,
voracious as wolves,
surrounding you in it’s hunger,
kept at bay by faith and fire,
and by memories of dawns long past.

It is not bravery that bids you fight the night. No.
It is something else,
an unwillingness to disappear quietly,
a stubbornness,
You do not know whether it comes
from God or the devil,
but it scratches and claws each day
for it’s moment of eternity,
for survival,
determined to die not in the darkness,
but in light.

And so,
you light your tiny candles.
You sing your songs.
You pray.
You dance with the wind as your orchestra
as the coyotes watch from a distance
and wonder.

About this poem

Night falls. But Dawn rises. Life runs in cycles. All we have to do is survive until the next dawn.

The picture was taken at the quarry across the street from my house.

Tom