Friday 4 January 2013

Into the Night

Back door carpentry curtailed at sunset I found two new double A batteries and put them into the  head torch, stretched it over my head and took off, up the logging road. Though only early evening there was no glimmer of day left and as I ran the torch  threw a thin wavering elipse onto the ground; a blur of pale yellow light dispersing the black. The beam jarring to my rhythm. Its shudder my running mate.
I ran into the night, away from familiarity, the forest  a wall of darkness on my left. A mile along the way I imagined I heard faint footsteps behind and felt a familiar shrill creeping along my spine. Fear is such a distorting impulse and, ignoring the urge to look behind, I ran on into the growing darkness.. Sounds of the Bold burn and surging winds dominated my senses. My logical self felt no anxiety while my ancient self, honed over millennia, felt sharp-toothed dangers and supernatural presences residing in the shadowlands.  Fear rises and falls like wind.



Another mile and, at the junction of three roads, I stopped and turned off my torch. I stood in the blackness, exposed, breathing its sounds, feeling its greyshapes on my skin. I observed myself projecting imaginings onto the void, while seeing, experiencing,  that the landscape, the forest, was benign; indifferent. As I became part of the forest, no longer battery-casting darkness aside, my night vision emerged. Like a drowning man I swallowed the black but found it life-giving.
Dark tree masses harboured sleeping deer - Home.
Brook burblings, a song.
Star light: eternal presence.

No comments:

Post a Comment