Sounds in the black
I'm in the well. The deep well of what have I done.
Below me echoes the sound of a thousand feet of
blank air.
Above me, light fades to a pinprick. On all sides
are the slick, slimy bricks
built to hold back the earth,
to keep it from caving in,
to create a passage for bringing water from below.
Once, I looked over into my child's face
and saw myself staring back. Saw the insecurities
and pride,
the wonder and alarm. It was strange and yet - satisfying.
I've created immortality, it flows in his veins. And yet,
he is his own self. A self I have always known. He is both new
and old at the same time, a million years of love and change
meeting in the moment of conception. Lives won and lost,
all leading to the here and now. Looking over,
I see him as if distantly.
It sounds like nonsense, these words with no form.
These thoughts that pour out like ink on the page. It sounds like
too much
thinking and not enough sleeping. It sounds strange. I'm sorry for that,
mostly because, if I could,
I would let you in. Or let you pull me up from the silence.
Or, stand up
on my own. I am not sad,
though it may sound that I am,
only thinking and waiting
here in the depths of the day.
Outside, there are sounds in the black. Crickets and singing beetles
and dogs. A glimmer of wind, a shifting of stars, and a thousand years
of nothing,
a million years of everything.
Someday I'll be like that glimmer,
barely a brushing of wind,
I'll be gone,
like wishes
dropped down
the deep
well.
Below me echoes the sound of a thousand feet of
blank air.
Above me, light fades to a pinprick. On all sides
are the slick, slimy bricks
built to hold back the earth,
to keep it from caving in,
to create a passage for bringing water from below.
Once, I looked over into my child's face
and saw myself staring back. Saw the insecurities
and pride,
the wonder and alarm. It was strange and yet - satisfying.
I've created immortality, it flows in his veins. And yet,
he is his own self. A self I have always known. He is both new
and old at the same time, a million years of love and change
meeting in the moment of conception. Lives won and lost,
all leading to the here and now. Looking over,
I see him as if distantly.
It sounds like nonsense, these words with no form.
These thoughts that pour out like ink on the page. It sounds like
too much
thinking and not enough sleeping. It sounds strange. I'm sorry for that,
mostly because, if I could,
I would let you in. Or let you pull me up from the silence.
Or, stand up
on my own. I am not sad,
though it may sound that I am,
only thinking and waiting
here in the depths of the day.
Outside, there are sounds in the black. Crickets and singing beetles
and dogs. A glimmer of wind, a shifting of stars, and a thousand years
of nothing,
a million years of everything.
Someday I'll be like that glimmer,
barely a brushing of wind,
I'll be gone,
like wishes
dropped down
the deep
well.
