IN THE ARMS OF NIGHT

I’ve been thinking much on the idea of darkness and ‘Night’ - The Lady Nyx who walks in darkness. I have always been a Child of the Night and for years, one who has reason to know Nyx well. It is said she carries Hypnos (sleep) in her arms, but sometimes he refuses his comfort and then you have only the comfort of Nyx, as you lie awake. Accordingly, Nyx, has long been a companion of mine. Though she gave birth to the fates, doom, deceit, mockery, blame, and misery, she also gave birth to dreams, pleasure, love, friendship and Hemera who is the day to balance the night. Both Aeschylus and Hesiod ascertain that night is the time of true inspiration as the Muses sing at night on Mount Helicon, hymns to Nyx and the gods. Now I wonder why I like that idea?

I loved faucon’s thoughts on Darkness. This comes from my Jungian study “Dances With Archetypes.” http://danceswitharchetypes.blogspot.com/


Nightwoods

While we walk
In the wilderness of the shadow woods
All we know is it’s twining darkness the
Sense of the unknowable exhaling wildness
Lacing the next reaching root, the next
Whipping branch that reaches out to slice
Our face with unexpected purpose
The smell of something breathing on the neck,
The touch of panic threading through the blood
The raw, panting, single note of
Fear

We could walk those woods by daylight
And note that the path is clear and wide
That there is nothing menacing anywhere
And laugh at ourselves for the our way our blood
Had beat in our throat or the way our knees had felt
Each rustle in the underbrush when the world
was painted with ink and omen,
We could walk the same path with a huge, bright
Lantern, washing away the night, showing the same
Clear path, and we could laugh at ourselves again, but
That would be foolish

A lighted wood and
A wood of darkness
Are not the same place
At all

We hope to learn to walk the dark
To breath the blackness with even calm
To intuit reaching roots and whipping boughs
And learn to dance around, moving through the dimness
With the eyes of a hunting cat, the balance of a deer
To come to still the jump of panic in the blood
Smooth the raw, panting, strangled note of
Fear

We come to learn to face the night
Not turn the
Darkness
To Day


©Edwina Peterson Cross