Afraid of the Dark

 

Afraid of the Dark

 

Someone shut off the lamp so I reach to restore my light

banishing swirling night, diminishing the imps’ work

 

I forget that what I feel are fears only a fool knows:

ideas not things, spectral not actual, inside not out

 

I spy my own long shadow before sunrise in my childhood

or I imagine a phantom alive in a waking fugitive dream

 

and a chill streaks out of my soul into my extremities

its instant shock bulb flash impulse straightens me

 

Monsters of the Id chase me off of my Forbidden Planet -

where Leslie Nielsen and Anne Francis cower in the tempest

 

of someone else’s invented lonely eons of crashed empire

as a forlorn light shoulders spare, infinite perspectives

 

I see them where they are not. Werewolves, panthers, stalkers -

they who go strangling outside tonight sinister and strange

 

A cool palm descends from heaven on my shoulder, Daphne’s whisper

like fingertips says, Go back to sleep, stop dreaming, hush now

 

The room defocuses and light fills my inner corridors asleep

as dreamless I fade into a gray light inside me calm and brave