“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”)
Frank J. Tassone 
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