Childish Fears
As a child I was never afraid of the dark.
My big brother was and he would wait
for me to lead the way each night to the attic
bedroom we shared. (If irked by him
that day, I would linger downstairs,
making him wait for his night's repose.)
And in bed I would lie awake for a time,
watching with a child's wonder the shadows
flickering across the ceiling, made by the cars driving by
in the street 3 stories below. The way they moved so swift,
I thought those dark reflections of light might be alive,
grey soldiers of the night passing over me....
I had no fear of death either, for I knew if it came,
I would go back to a very beautiful place, feeling
heaven I had come from, so to heaven I would return
(but then, I was still innocent). No, I feared only one thing,
but it was a huge, mighty thing: I feared eternity.
I saw, in my child's mind, a road that went on forever,
never ending, without an horizon to mark the journey's end.
--And I quaked at its infinity.
Now I no longer fear the endless, for my soul told me once,
quickly and quietly: I am here, without begin, without end,
forever--then I understood-- my soul reflected my mortal mind,
my brain that can't recall its own birth and really cannot fathom
its own death, for it exists only and always in the moment,
the indefinable, eternal now....
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