Judgment Day

Darkness closes in
Like a deafening silence,
Heavy on the world
And me,
Though I continue to wade
Through pools of quicksand,
One after the other
‘Til they touch the horizon
With their outstretched fingers.

Night swings into day
With hardly any notice
Of the sparrow ‘s trill of lament 
To the absent sun
—truant harbinger of the morn—
As the sky remains draped
In a grey the shade of unpolished slate,
And hungry hawks circle 
In wait of the spoils.

Thunder drums across the sky,
An omen of impending doom,
And yet the air is still, 
But for the whisper of wings
And the exhale of my own breath,
As I listen to the chanted echoes 
Of the wind
Its dull monotone pierced
By the shrill screech 
of the hawk

Far in the distance
Where the earth and heavens meet
On any other day but today,
There is life.
On this precipice of futility
I stand 
With my thoughts in my hand
Facing my own mortality
Scripted in stone.



october 2007
Janet Reid





Awarded by Poetic Constellations