Poetry

Blackness: Night before Ash Wednesday, 2020

Not that midnight is so very dark
in my dimly lighted sleepless room,
white sheets on my bed
even whiter than what’s so thoroughly painted
around me;

not that darkness is so bleak or fearsome,
full of bad dreams that need an ending
or even the pain one suffers alone;

no, none of these realities
describe one’s ailing self
before the unseen impalpable strength
inside one’s soul and everywhere within,
where blackness is a promise of gentle rest,
a way of being whole.

Patrice Wilson

A retired associate professor of English at Hawaii Pacific University, Patrice M. Wilson recently spent 5 years of study as a novice in the cloistered Carmelite monastery in Kaneohe, Hawaii. Her full-length poetry book--Hues of Darkness, Hues of Light--was published in 2013 by eLectio Publishing. She has three poetry chapbooks with Finishing Line Press: When All Else Falters; On Neither Side; and A Different Current. Her poems have been published in several journals.

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