Going Dark

I need to "go dark" for a poem I want to write. I need to visit that dark inner landscape of loss, grief, even hopelessness, a place of going through the motions of life even when one is certain there is no point to such motions. I have explored this bleak landscape in the past—a little bit in my own life, but mostly as a way to access poems. For those of you who don't know me well, trust that I balance journeys to this empty place with many, many journeys to brighter places of warmth and creativity and purpose.

At least, I once was able to effect such balance. I need to "go dark" now, but I am finding it difficult to access the bleak, empty place. Because...we are living it. It's that "new normal" we're all insisting isn't normal. How can I go dark when it's all dark? Why go dark; why not just look at the front page of any real newspaper? Why write another poem?

I know, I know. Because one must. Because...poetry. Because the world needs. Because to not would be to surrender to the forces that have co-opted darkness and turned it into a place that feeds on grief and sneers at empathy and scoffs at emptiness. A place darker than dark. A place from which even darkness recoils. A place not of darkness, but of evil.

I'll figure it out. Poems will be written. Darkness will be visited; motions will be described; the reasons for those motions will be hinted at. Gardens will bloom. Graves will be dug. Here we go.

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go dark black bird in a gold sky singing