For your amusement...

My first attempt at poetry in quite a while, and written while sick and trying to fall asleep. So don't be too harsh :P

Why I Love The Night

The silent dark of evening
Is like being surrounded by subtle mirrors
Where you see reflections too dim to perceive in the day

When we look in these night mirrors
We start to remember the right questions
We don’t ask “Do I look pretty?” we ask “Am I happy?”

In the quiet hours of our day and of our minds
We find ourselves - like adored stuffed animals
Temporarily lost under a pile of dirty clothes, schoolbooks, and the day’s dishes

As we find ourselves again
And contemplate these hidden reflections
We start to remember priorities and passions

In the dark the possibilities
Are only limited by creativity and imagination
Instead of time and money

The midnight hour blessedly conceals complications
So our spirit can soar over chasms of “How”
And speed past deserts of “When”
To any place at all


(copyright Stacia A.C.)

Copyright Stephen Vincent Benet

THANKS

For these my thanks, not that I eat or sleep,
Sweat or survive, but that at seventeen
I could so blind myself in writing verse
That the wall shuddered and the cry came forth
And the numb hand that wrote was not my hand
But a wise animal's.
Then the exhaustion and the utter sleep.

O flagrant and unnecessary body,
So hard beset, so clumsy in your skill!
For these my thanks, not that I breathe and ache,
Talk with my kind, swim in the naked sea,
But that the tired monster keeps the road
And even now, even at thirty-eight,
The metal heats, the flesh grows numb again
And I can still go muttering down the street
Not seeing the interminable world
Nor the ape-faces, only the live coal.