A Safe Shade Of Darkness Poem by Paul Perkins

A Safe Shade of Darkness - 2005


The soul and body feel disdain
of darkness and of life.
both soul and flesh
fear facing death...
bereft of friend,
deprived of breath;

Both know the victor's final fate...
both fear the darkest night awaits...
the body calls for comfort still
in welcome of the cold night's chill;

Shifting on sunsets
of calm solitude,
soldiering homeward
through dirges and fugues;

We traverse a walkway,
a byway's morass,
we open slowly
a door of our past;

We reach to the source
from whence we all came,
a place in our twilight
cloaked of the same;

Finished with fighting,
the spirit now seeks
a safe shade of darkness
in which we can sleep.