This Dark Night

Ride quickly into this dark night,
I'm bound and helpless here.
The moon and stars?
They've all gone out.
Swallowed by the fear.

And now the empty pitch shouts curses,
Gross, unspeakable attacks.
And now the silence is invading,
There's no defence,
There's only black.

Let this be the end of it,
Please let there be no more!
Let my body cease it's breathing,
Cease it's beating,
What are either of those for?

I lay myself against the earth,
Yes, I lay down to die.
When pressing in against my ears,
A name, a prayer,
A whispered battle cry.

There's suddenly a rider,
Though I did not see him come.
But now he's here, close as my skin.
And of my pain?
He's bearing some.


I was originally forming this poem as the person who sits beside the one in pain. Coming out of my own prayer as I sat with a grieving mother. But after an idea of my own mom, I changed perspectives and wrote as the mother, the griever, the empty one.