the darkest night

Have you ever experienced what the mystics call a Dark Night of the Soul? Me too. In cancer and chronic illness. Once when my child was caught in the claws of a despair so wild that despair was birthed in my own being, too. And then, there was the dark night of 2024. My spine crumbling and my soul okay. It felt strange that I could not not see the light, even as I ached. After a half-dozen of these trials, I claim it as one of the grandest gifts to say I have known the darkest night and it did not swallow me whole.

the darkest night by J. Magnano

if someone scanned the sky of my soul

the stars were not obscured

and I, not fully plunged into the womb -

but not apart from it

saw them bright and obvious

because the night

some depressions in the earth

hold us a little while

a pothole or cavernous ditch

like a protective belly

and some swallow us whole

this was not the latter

if someone had dropped in a rope

I would have told them

I am comfortable here

even as the water of my every cell ached

and here’s what they do not tell us

a dark night of the soul can be much like

a winter solstice celebration

as you take notice that even in the pitch of darkness

you can still see