we are not in control

the darkness impinges

my emotions are so close to my surface

I feel like I’m on the Ring of Fire

with great plates moving against each other

and plumes of feeling ready to erupt

and surprise me on the calm surface on which I appear to live,

as the year winds down, the dark crowds the day

and slows down dawn and speeds up dusk,

consciously we moderns can ignore that underlying truth

with electric lights, fossil-fueled heat, and denial,

nevertheless, we get irritable, we are tired,

we feel a darkness impinge upon us,

we don’t realize how much 

we are driven by that underlying darkness we cannot control,

yet what we can understand if we open ourselves

to realize the depths that are so much who we are,

dark and light are one, so are we,

particularly when our earth trembles

and plumes of feelings remind us we are not in control. 

by Henry H. Walker

December 12, ’14