The Dark Will Never Win
I am gloomy shadow. I am lovely light.
Not everyone has the will or wish to see.
I do not depend much upon the night
though day and night both do encumber me
as much as they comfort me within my fright.
I do not hide away in the dark
but observe my acherontic self at unexpected times;
a uniquely qualified self-shark
leaving others unaware of my emotional crimes.
Some might call this shadow wrong, bad, no light lark.
It’s a freakish, stinging turning point,
a cruel and disconnecting stranglehold
that sometimes scares me very sad, disjoints,
and hogties my music hands and smothers smiles and folds
a gag upon my singing voice.
Shadow drains away my crafts, new and old.
The gift of words I have in me,
steals my paints and gems and dims my gold.
I fight, a futile, asthmatic prisoner of my shadow-self.
Sometimes I break free enough to feel my laughing soul.
My thoughts spin out of range.
Ideas burn like tragic, forgotten monuments,
sacrificed to the insatiable psycho god of self-rage,
and all of the best unborn creations within me are meant
to vaporize inside a poison shadowed plague.
My precious loves and my most tender offerings
lose days and even months in the Land of Nod.
Their fates vaporize: a near missing.
Sometimes they’re staggered beneath shadow more than flawed.
More often than it sounds, it lifts from me, it’s lifting.
I am sweet, happy light and I do shine!
The menacing shadow monster sleeps and I awake.
Be it day or night it feels resplendent fine.
Your love has brought acceptance free from pity’s sake
for though all the shades of grey are mine,
you know the brilliance toward which I falter and strain.
Pity’s not your gift and does not press me into depths unkind.
In your love light that joins with mine I no longer worry
that I have, as so much else, to fear you too.
My eyes see you turn your back no more on me.
You’ll not reject the shadow or the light, will you?
As others have, not understanding even some, for me.
They, who have blinded me to hopefulness,
and left me more dimly unwell
than when in my guilty unproductiveness
I fuel my bright mind, burning more hotly in my shadowed hell.
You see the light and love us both as one.
You love the shadow and the light faithful every day.
With all the shadow and light I am, I yearn
for your bright and sunny, warm and caring ways.
Your quiet love patiently waits even when I turn.
You embrace shadow, and for you light softly plays.
And you have loved for so long now,
Your years of proof have healed my heart.
Instead of labeling some unwelcome illness, ouch,
a humiliating depressive slide from light departs.
In your bright eyes, and in mine, now
I am not a sick bad, but simply, who I am each day
And even though that changes much
From month to month or day to way
You love me every time dark and light receive your touch.
With love for who I am and to no other will I sway.
And I am not an illness, or dark or light.
I’m just a girl who’s more
than a predictable, sad satellite
with dreams that can and can’t be torn
pretty much like anyone.
Blessed with my gifts, and cursed on any given day
I wear my shadow and light like skin
but my first, best and last gift, I’d say
Is given by friends, and you, and God within…
for believing in whichever day is me.
The dark will never win.
Kathy Adams 2012
For my husband, Darrell, who simply loves me as I am.
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