The night is dense with thickening clouds
That press downward against the earth;
No light whispering winds glide across the darkening land.
Only silent, transparent dimness reaches out
From every direction
To smoothly engulf everything.
Melting the distinct contours of each shape
Into one massive blackness,
The night consumes everything
And slowly becomes all that there is.
Gradually my hands become lost to me.
Their outlines fade and altogether disappear.
My feet are here
Only because I feel them
Pressed into the invisible sand
That I imagine must certainly be still beneath me.
Or is it?
I do not know for sure.
All I know now is
That my body and my surroundings have disappeared,
Blending into each other.
Now only my breathing, heartbeats and thought exist.
They reassure that I am alive
While everything else tells me
That we have joined together to become night.
The related commentary that my daughter when eight years old wrote:
Have you ever stood in complete darkness so that you can no longer
see your body or anything else for that matter? Being like that brings a
strange feeling over you. It’s as if you become apart of everything and
everything is a part of you.
For some people, this might be how they view death. They might see
death as the end of the individual self as it becomes one with the All.
For the writer, her breathing, feelings of her feet and so on tell her that
she is not dead. Those are all that she has of herself since she cannot see
herself. Perhaps this might be what it is like to be blind. I think this poem
shows day going into night, but I also think it might show death in it too.
Sally Dugman is a writer from MA, USA.
