IN THE QUIET OF THE NIGHT

I touch the texture of darkness

and find it smooth slipping

through my fingers like wind

through the branches of a willow

for an instant I am afraid

I fall into the arms of shadows

then

I remember shadows drift

in the play of light

I am lifted into the radiance of you

a beacon always leading me home

into the songs of birds

calling from the distant trees the serenity

of sunrise the feel of a hand small and fragile

reaching for mine I sense my place in this vast

world a single seed fallen

into the soil

of an enormous forest how can I be and not

be part of everything life is as brief

as a single breath death

is all eternity between the two

we have the choice to rise above

the invidious gloom embrace

the divinity of love