“It is better to light a candle then curse the darkness.” —Chinese proverb
I understand, Sylvia. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll recognize the blackness within. How it envelops us like a night sky at Mohican Center, far from firelight, where the crunch of gravel under our steps is our only evidence of embodiment. How it flavors the emptiness of a final intimacy, during a second-to-last encounter, as the windows of an old nissan frost over from ever-rapid breaths. How like an old, obsessive-compulsion that overwhelms a papier-mâché resolve and actualizes a delightful ruin, this blackness is.
But you need to understand, Sylvia. Blackness does not dwell alone within us. It shares its darkness with the breathtaking light of color. How it blinds us in beauty like the peak cherry blossoms carried to the sky on a spring breeze. How it bears us like bay water supporting backfloaters on an August day devoid of a single cloud. How like a supernatural stream that flows up and out of the ruins of our making, this color is.
We are blinded by both the blackness and color we encounter in “such expressionless sirens” like your “stars among open lillies.” The choice of which one to embrace is always ours.
ambers …
last darkness
before dawn
for Real Toads’ Fireblossom Friday: This Is (Almost) The End, imagined by Fireblossom
Poets United: Poetry Pantry #401, posted by Mary
#GloPoWriMo2018 / #NaPoWriMo2018 29/30 (APRIL 4, 1962: “CROSSING THE WATER”)
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Very true and wise words. Still I get depressed reading Plath.
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Indeed. Thanks for your feedback! 😀
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A great response to Sylvia. Lovely haiku.
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Thanks, Vivian! 😀
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🙂
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The choice of which one to embrace is ours………I wish more people understood this. Good one, Frank.
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Me too, Sherry! Thanks! 😀
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Very interesting in your response and haiku!
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Thank you, Donna! 😀
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A lovely response.
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Thank you 😀
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Wise and beautiful. If only she had been capable of that choice, in THAT moment!
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Indeed, Rosemary. Thanks! 😀
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I expect we embrace them both, by turns. Nice to see you, Frank. 🙂
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Thanks! 😀
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I enjoyed the intensity of your descriptions in the prose.
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Thanks! 😀
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I love your response to Sylvia Plath, Frank, and how you put her straight, especially:
‘How it bears us like bay water supporting backfloaters on an August day devoid of a single cloud’
and the amber-coloured haiku..
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Thanks, Kim! 😀
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Wonderful prose… and I feel like you’re talking to her… ,maybe more to the one in the bell-jar, the person than the one in the poems… but I like that.
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Thanks, Bjorn. 😀
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