In the Darkness (Lydia Wylie-Kellerman)
Backyard fire images from Lydia Wylie-Kellerman
Editor’s note: In addition to this beautiful poem about darkness, see Lydia Wylie-Kellerman’s piece this month “Advent Song Summoned by the Forest: Raising Kids during Climate Catastrophe,” Originally printed in The Catholic Worker, December 2020.
In the darkness, the snow gently dances from sky to earth.
In the darkness, life awakes as the racoon sneaks through the thicket and the owl wraps her talons around the pine branch watching and waiting.
In the darkness, my children cry out my name having met their deepest fears.
In the darkness, I ache for my own mother’s fingers in my hair and her voice ushering me towards dreams.
In the darkness, noise dies away and flashing lights stop trying to sell us things.
In the darkness, I am alone with myself.
In the darkness, I am confronted by the truth of my heart that I had desperately been trying to find or perhaps rather hide.
In the darkness, everything slows, and I catch a glimpse of Kairos.
In the darkness, I am held and loved and known.
In the darkness, embryonic fluid swirls and makes room for life beckoned into this world.
In the darkness, deep within the earth, the seed waits welcoming the gifts of water and nutrients.
In the darkness, we gather and tend the fires.
In the darkness, I learn to trust the rhythm of the seasons. Night has fallen. Winter has begun.
In the darkness, we are returned with eyes closed and bodies stiff. Returned to the earth, we are food for another generation.
In the darkness, we light a single flame as an act of audacious hope in a crushing world.
In the darkness, we listen deeper.
In the darkness, we move our bodies as acts of joy and love.
In the darkness, the stars have led the way for generations to babes in swaddling clothes and to the borders of liberation.
In the darkness, we sing for Emmanuel.
In the darkness, our bodies remember. In the darkness our bodies heal.
In the darkness, we prepare for movement and the steps our collective bodies will make when dawn comes.
In the darkness, we vigil with death and weep for our loss.
In the darkness, we can feel that new world breathing and hear her calling our names.
Lydia Wylie-Kellermann is the editor of Geez magazine, a quarterly, ad-free, print magazine at the intersection of art, activism, and faith. She is also the editor of the forthcoming book The Sandbox Revolution: Raising Kids for a Just World (Broadleaf, 2021). She lives in Detroit, MI.
