The Dark See

Unflinching
Hollows in the deep
Reflect a dim star,
Which eons of feeble and uncertain light
Draw eagerly down to the grim earth.
Multitudinous, dilated eyes—
Beneath fields of scudding clouds
Of violet, cobalt, and black—
Drink in that glint of hope,
Written beyond this earthly coil.
Yet in our orisons a darkness lurks.
The empty ones, those creatures among us
Of fears and conspiracy 
Seeded like frogspawn in shallow waters, 
Lurch toward a starless night
Of nothingness…
Not just for themselves,
But worst of all
For those whose eyes 
Brim with that guttering, tender light.
What servants of grievance creep humanity toward 
Another age of darkness,
Dragging along an unwilling baggage of generations?
More and more, our gazes inexorably follow
The empty ones,
A horror of witnessing,
And one by one the sputtering pinpoints
Wink out,
Lost from the spaces within us
Where once burned a star.

—Lissa Lucas