What is darkness
but light that has gone
where we can not follow?
What is the night
but the world withdrawing its face,
leaving us alone with the abundance
of our own imagining?
What is the difference between dreams and nightmares,
which coagulate in shades of wonder
with such a blinding brightness
they become the deafening black
amassing under one's bed?
Once,
a bed was a raft no foot dared leave,
adrift upon an ocean of moonlit carpet.
Beneath it, some ancient creature waited,
patient with the patience of things
that need not prove their existence,
its breath stirring the dust
like weeds beneath murky water.
And above it,
where the ceiling surrendered to the stars,
there were others,
those with wings, with bells, with pattering hooves,
and one among them, they said,
could descend through the chimney
and leave the proof of his love
beneath a tree,
waiting like a secret
the world conspired to keep.
Was this not the same faith?
To tremble with terror and wonder,
to believe the unseen
had widened its jaw
or opened its embrace
Blind me, then,
just for a little while,
now that morning lays its pale hand across the floor
and leaves beneath the bed
only a fallen sock
and a kingdom of dust.