Come the Dark

It is in my nature. It is not something over which I have control. Some call it hereditary – perhaps it is.
But it is a fact that I have learned to live with.

The early earlier hours, when most normal are sleeping, snugly, slumbering silently, is when I greet the day.

Four A.M., 4:30. Usually within 20 minutes one side or the other. Being that I have learned to live within
my normalcy my routine is pretty much always the same.

Following a few basic chores – coffee-making, cat feeding, etcetera, I make my way tothe corner window,
to my always inviting and comforting recliner.

It faces south-east, just slightly across the treetops. Treetops that at this time of year are still barren,
prickly sticks of branches poking and probing up into the night air. Beyond their skeletalscreen the
constant flow of the St. Lawrence is felt, if not seen. The dark void that brackets the winkling lights of the
south shore condos, the necklace that flickers as the tree branches sway about.

It is in those moments that I then sit quietly, searching the skies, seeing either blocky greycloud outlines,
or, seeing nothing.

Come the dark.

These days the dark evokes a feeling of threat. It speaks in windy whispers of sad and unwelcome realities.
It mocks the sense of comforting normalcy that once was.

Come the dark, the dark horseman, to render many of us stricken. To add our names, our numbers to an
ever-growing pyramid of casualties.

And I sit, feeling the dark, feeling the darkness. Which in these times seems to linger longer.

Turning to look out the window behind me, the window that faces the normally busy roadway,
I am constantly stunned by the vacancy that now greets me. The pools of rainwater glisten up a
reflection of the  monotony of the red, the orange, the green signals, of the stoplights.

Rarely now, these mornings, does one see a car. The odd one or two that slip along the  street quickly
come and as quickly disappear.

Come the dark, too soon. Come the morning, come the dawn, these days, not quite soon enough.

A simple spot of sunshine has become the currency of our time.