Valus Knowflake Posts: 2692 From: Registered: Apr 2009
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posted April 16, 2010 06:18 AM
Vigil by Dennis O'Driscoll
Life is too short to sleep through. Stay up late, wait until the sea of traffic ebbs, until noise has drained from the world like blood from the cheeks of the full moon. Everyone else around you has succumbed: they lie like tranquillised pets on a vet's table; they languish on hospital trolleys and friends' couches, on iron beds in hostels for the homeless, under feather duvets at tourist B&Bs. The radio, devoid of listeners to confide in, turns repetitious. You are your own voice-over. You are alone in the bone-weary tower of your bleary-eyed, blinking lighthouse, watching the spillage of tide on the shingle inlet. You are the single-minded one who hears time shaking from the clock's fingertips like drops, who watches its hands chop years into diced seconds, who knows that when the church bell tolls at 2 or 3 it tolls unmistakably for you. You are the sole hand on deck when temperatures plummet and the hull of an iceberg is jostling for prominence. Your confidential number is the life-line where the sedated long-distance voices of despair hold out muzzily for an answer. You are the emergency services' driver ready to dive into action at the first warning signs of birth or death. You spot the crack in night's façade even before the red-eyed businessman on look-out from his transatlantic seat. You are the only reliable witness to when the light is separated from the darkness, who has learned to see the dark in its true colours, who has not squandered your life. IP: Logged |