When you reflect on darkness,
that it doesn’t thrust forward
but shrinks to secret corners,

when you see how birds
fold languidly into it, cheeping
softly in their feathers,

the way cats’ eyes expand, yellow
pupils taking furry draughts
of its enticing blackness,

how it spreads its viscous skirts
over jeweled windows and ruinous
gutters, over kisses and slaps,

washing over feasts and graves,
leaving every absence filled,
every sorrow lost to dreams,

it is oddly understandable
why the weary old, the damaged
do so calmly come to death.
—

Sharon Scholl is professor emerita from Jacksonville University where she taught the western  humanities courses and non-western studies (Africa, Japan).  Her chapbook, Summer’s Child, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.  Single poems appear currently in Adanna, Caesura, and Kalyna Language Press.  A musician/composer, she maintains a website that gives away free music to small choirs. She lives in Atlantic beach Fl.