when the dusk has descended...

When the dusk has descended and the shadows stretch long and grow small under the street lamps, I walk with a quiet trod laden with noise in my soul. I look to sky and stars and seek to quell the chaos within. With cold berry nose and breath barely perceptible in twilight, I slowly stride to this dissonant cadence in my soul. Unhurried, yet suddenly full of yearning; replete, yet flurrying. Mind and soul soar yards above me, searching, seeking, for sight into splendor divine. Strength straining and still my soul sits in solicitude. Daytime memories catapult across my mind, my mind failing to dam the flood; my world becomes engulfed, words, memories, thoughts, encapsulated in water, smoke, black holes of romanticism. But in the night, the quiet pulls images into frozen nostalgia, fading into a vacuum of passing moments. Eventually my walk finds an end, sorrowfully stuck, avoiding the next road’s bend, and the slab below my feet becomes my seat. My dog, sole companion, sits in the quiet with me, on the cold concrete, behind the place that some would call a home. The trees stand in the dark, and the stars are faint above, faint to sight, faint to my dimming and blurring eyes. Lonesome sitting disconnects from time and place. The breeze above and the moonlight, silhouetting the trees rustling, metamorphose into my sole focused perception. Once this shroud of darkness falls and my limbs give in to fatigue, I feel the ticking time and glimpse my fleeting life, mortal, failed, resigned… I wonder within me, where has my striving gone? Where is my dream, the charisma, life? Secluded in darkness, somewhere, is a buried word, a hidden peace, the ‘Selah’ that my shattering soul seeks assiduously, and silently, unfound.