Eclipse Poem by D A Phinney

What horific price is this that I must pay
What twisted torment unlatches all my comfort
And strikes me
Like thirty-nine lashes
Time is stretched out of reach
Space leaves me behind

I am crestfallen at the feet of your mercy
Maya obstructs me and my heartbeat falls dead in my ears
I am cast out onto an uncaring wind
Where there is no rest
There is no peace

I thirst for impossibilities and taste my own blood
My hunger is a famished banshee, ravening through me
What is this immortal thing arising from my deep
What is this wild elemental force that shatters
Invisibly, yet refuses to destroy me

What have you invoked by so gentle a voice and soft words
O my love, she
Who whispers 'never'
Like some resounding
Final
Universal
Chord
And I am left behind this wall of silence

While the slavering beast turns upon itself
Crying out, crying out for all the days I will not hear your voice
All the nights I will not hold you to my heart
All the ruinous stretch of life ahead
Through this desolate soul-scape
Always lighted with the piercing bolts of memory
Yet always drenched in the depths of darkness

Blind with loss, in a woeful stagger
I am set to wander
And in the cold unsleeping city of the soul
I look up into the cascading night
And I cannot see the stars

And I wonder with unbidden terror
If they may have all gone out
And I cast myself down onto the ground
Wracked by a boundless clawing fear
That perhaps...
They were never even there