Dawn


When dawn came and darkness quickly fled
like a thief caught in the act,
I knew it had something to hide.

For the child who in my dream
woke up from a nightmare
believing the night has a mouth
wide enough to swallow the earth,
the arrival of the morning
was like lifting up an eternal veil of fear
from his haunted eyes.
But for me it was like receiving a gift
I was not sure whether to accept or not.

In my driveway,
as I stared at the face of the morning
with mixed feelings,
my little boy was busy looking
at the brightness of the emerging sun
and happily musing and chuckling.
The look on his face
was as if he was wondering in his mind
where the night suddenly fled to.

Maybe he was asking:
where is the audacity of the night,
its glorified powers, its clubbing jaws,
its claws dripping with blood,
if the shadow of the morning
could force it to run into hiding?

Maybe he was asking:
where are its celebrated ghosts,
its overrated demons and devils
hiding at every dark corner
with whet swords,
if dawn could easily shred
its dark suit like shredded paper
to make a big fireball,
turning the sleepy face of the morning
into a bright spectacle?

Maybe he was asking:
where are its devouring sneaky wild carnivores,
its ferocious and fetish emissaries,
its long-reaching strangling arms,
if the sluggish hands of dawn
could so easily unmask its dark shell
for all to see its nakedness?

Looking away from his happy face
I realized I have become blind,
a man caught in the nest of fear,
a man worrying over the troubles of the day
that he could not see in the day
what his little boy was seeing,
a man that saw darkness
in a day dressed in dazzling white,
a man that could not see the reason for gratitude
in the beauty of flowers waking up from sleep,
in trees brushing off sleep from their eyes
with their flustering leaves,
in the brilliant white hills of the morning sky,
and even in the face of his little boy
probably lost in the wonder of how
unbelievably the hungry mouth of dawn
licked up the contours of the night,
washing away every trace
of its footprints with dew
to bestow upon mankind
another day to confront
the castigating gestures of fear and doubt.

2010.George MacLean Akurunwa