across the dark

“across the dark”

The black ink gathers long before the drop descends.

A trick of sight, a stroke of art,

we count the voided centuries we haven't lived

and mistake the inner blueprint for a beacon—

some stark prescience charting the ruin

long before the stone leaves the quarry,

long before the porch is raised to rot in shadow.

Yet brighter glows the mist where we step blind.

The blessed nescience of an unmarked hour

holds no designed decay, no predicted frost

to choke the opening bloom.

To foresee the end is merely to rehearse the exit

while the curtain is still rising;

better the quiet blankness of a line

that has never spoken the dialect of regret.

We balance on the edge: one eye foretells

the heavy shadow where the cadence falls,

the other drifts among unmade timber,

deaf to the low whisper in the wall.

Let prescience name the price, the place, the hour—

it is the unknowing breath that keeps us whole,

tossing uncalculated dice across the dark.

.