The night was cold and unforgiving
As I walked to the gravesite of the Past.
How I wished I could just keep on living,
But the whispers of shame to the dead chained me fast.
Kneeling before the tombstone in sorrow,
I read the epitaph for the hundredth time:
“Here lie the mistakes, sins, and wishes for tomorrow
Of one human heart; they hold now reason or rhyme
“Only days stained with fear, doubt, and anger,
An occasional laugh and a smile here and there.
The legacy of the Past will be long remembered
As dismal, dark, trying, and unfair.”
Tears came to my eyes before I could think;
Mourning fell over me like a cruel December snow.
Beside the weathered plot, I felt my body sink
To the chilled, stony ground that bedded my dead foe.
Sleep came to me slowly; I welcomed its warm hand
As it slipped over my eyes and drew them closed.
But the darkness turned to dreams; nightmares ran
Before the eyes of my mind, their terrors imposed.
Demons accosted me; voices spoke low
In threat and menace, then screamed in their victory
Over me; I could only lie helpless below
Them, motionless…until a light, a beam of glory
Pierced the darkness, sliced it through,
And filled the atmosphere with songs of joy
Too clean and pure for the darkness and rue
In me to understand. The dreadful noise
Of evil and of the dead ceased in a moment;
The taunting cries, the bitter spite,
The slightest sounds of darkness fell silent
Before the majesty of this holy light.
My eyes snapped open and blinked in the dim
Light of stars and planets distant, yet near just the same.
Suddenly I glimpsed a man; I lay across from him
On the other side of the dead Past’s grave.
He sat, cross-legged, in the frozen dirt,
Silent, though the quiet spoke a volume
Of greatness, of hope, of love; there no hurt
Existed, by the grave of the fallen.
He stood and reached out his hand to me;
I took it, and immediately I knew
The dead Past was dead; it could no longer haunt me—
Finally, I realized that the Present is the Truth.