Night By Clouds Unbound

Starless sky, the desolate grandeur of night

Merging with the dark and sombre hills,

A firefly, small pinpoint of light

That flits across my sight the moment fills

Mid the unrelenting torrent of the rain.

The rose-breasts sleep, jays and ladder-backs

Await the morn to freely soar again

For on this night the febrile lightning cracks

And all is dimmed as an abandoned stage,

No movement but the fiercely shrieking wind

Lashing the black infinity with rage.

I watch and in the shadows of my mind

Tenuous threads through centuries of thought

Quiescent wait my thinking to invade,

Yet in this fragile hour peace is caught

And momentary calm, my pain delayed.

How strange this upward journey of the soul,

For every step ahead I fall below

The former height and the illusive goal

Beckons yet recedes and in my slow

Laborious climb unwilling to release

The memory of a once joyful past

And sorrow the antithesis of peace

Amused at my dilemma holds me fast.

Somewhere in my heart a joy abides

Covered by the caul of recent grief

That I must shed for when the soul decides

The hour must be seized for it is brief

And if it passes yet another round

Of ploughing through the ignorance will come.

A glimmer now, the night by clouds unbound,

The morning star accompanies me home.