It is in the stillness of a deepest autumn night
In the presence of the blind moonlight and the raw
That the terror comes to me.
It always comes, like an emotion or an old friend
To whom I have not spoken for a long time.
Is this the fear that the first men felt
As they cowered from predators?
Did they feel the vastness
That comes over me now?
Did they feel, as I often do,
That the world and its faceless anger
Would swallow them?
Is this the wonder
That made them call out to their creator?
