Dark Spots Poem by Smoky Hoss

How old was I
when I first discovered
this thing I was doing was living, and
it would have an end?
When did I come to know
that what I saw
far away and in everything
was the dark spot
in the world's light?

My grandfather's funeral was in 1969.
I was 7 years old.
Nothing ended prior to that.
Everything was pure light, eternal, alive
... until then.
But the sun, once so flawless,
had a hole in it,
a dark spot right there
in the very middle.
It became visible for me in 1969.
Funny thing is, now in every
blanched-yellow, dusky-red sunset
that tips the balance between
summer and fall, between beginnings and endings,
between living and dying,
I see it again.
The same soft light shaded
with a spot of dark death.
That dark spot.
That opposite of life.
Refuses to relent.
It only grow closer with every ochre-sunset I see.

The last lesson
my grandfather taught me was to see,
the unavoidable dark spots in life.



' It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between. ' - Diane Ackerman