We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage / And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, / We Poets of the proud old lineage / Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why ... (James Elroy Flecker)

3.5.20

In the Blackness













In the Blackness
Over the sea
night settles, breathes.
The vast dark,
womb-like, hushes.
Black rocks glisten.

I become other.
Invisibility calms me,
wraps me: soft
cloak / sheltering cavern –
paradoxically allowing nakedness.

My skin tingles,
more highly alive,
every cell awake, 
every follicle listening, 
deeply alert, thrumming.

Night is my
home, the sea
my mother, and
the merging sky
my safe blanket.

Yet sky and 
sea are also
doors, through which
I find light:
stars, deep crystals.



Sharing with Writers' Pantry #19 at Poets and Storytellers United.

Photo by Joakim Honkasalo on Unsplash

20 comments:

  1. Gosh! This is incredibly stunning, Rosemary!💘 You make me yearn for the open sky and sea. Especially resonate with; "soft cloak / sheltering cavern – paradoxically allowing nakedness.😍

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  2. sky and
    sea are also
    doors, through which
    I find light - love this... !!!!

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  3. I'm up all night, usually, so this especially resonates with me!

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  4. Gorgeous poem Love from the first till the last line

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  5. The first stanza sets the scene magically, Rosemary, and I can hear the night breathing. I love the description of skin tingling In the lines:
    ‘every cell awake,
    every follicle listening,
    deeply alert, thrumming.’
    And what a gorgeous ending!

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  6. Hi Rosemary - this is quite meditative. At times, I also find comfort in the night, and the waves as I once experience sleeping on the beach sand. It was a freedom of sort. Love the imagery - it is okay to be swallowed by darkness - in a positive sense though :-)

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  7. Night does have a way of cuddling us
    Happy Sunday Rosemary

    Much💜love

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  8. I felt the night in this. great words.

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  9. There is so much in life for us to relish, we can enjoy it everywhere. We often get upset with little setbacks which are merely lessons for us to learn from.

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  10. This is so gorgeous.

    My favorite:

    “Yet sky and
    sea are also
    doors, through which
    I find light:
    stars, deep crystals.”

    Beautiful.

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  11. I love the transformative magic of this piece, and how it trusts in the dark, knowing that peace, and maybe even answers, are waiting there.

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  12. I love how this builds to the final stanza's crescendo. Masterwork indeed.

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  13. I love how your poems makes everything look like a door or a field or freedom waiting to be taken, in whatever shape it might come.

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  14. This is a beautiful poem❣️Words I relate to, often feeling a beautiful night as “my safe blanket” 🌹

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  15. "Invisibility calms me,
    wraps me: soft
    cloak / sheltering cavern –
    paradoxically allowing nakedness."
    Rosemary, those lines remind me of my youth, before getting tamed by a spouse (or two). We would scale the fence of the local county club and go skinny dipping. After dark, towards or after midnight on hot nights. We have a backyard pool, sometimes I get the urge but haven't tried midnight swims yet.
    ..
    ..

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  16. this was the stanza that made it for me:

    Night is my
    home, the sea
    my mother, and
    the merging sky
    my safe blanket.

    thanks Rosemary.

    - Hamokine Poet

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  17. I feel you becoming the night. A night spell with crystals.

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  18. Beautiful, almost magical! No, actually magical, not almost. :)

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  19. It is as if you are one with the world. The sky as a blanket - a wonderful thought.

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  20. This is so beautiful from opening lines to ending. There is so much beauty in darkness. Too often we associate the velvet of night with fright.

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