Len Webster's 'Chrysalis' Poem by Len Webster

When he sees the future
it is very dark
like the gradual diminishing
of sight around the periphery,
the centre a slim point
of distant light
as age brings its culmination.
Too vague to calculate
or refine,
fingers reach to an undefined sky.
He cannot see them,
only imagine,
have faith in their presence,
faith that is a reaching out,
an unrecognised yearning for more
to make sense of the world
we have known,
of the world we would look for
as others in the past looked for
in their dreamtime.

Sight fails, sends him spinning.
There is no triumph in loss,
only in the elation of winning,
striking out and striking through
the fearful darkness
that holds him captive.

An inner light dawns:
it is the darkness of the womb,
a waiting room where he grows
until that time when
he is ready to burst out,
burst new,
breaking the silence
of the unseen sea.