Matins

What thoughts endeavor to pierce the brain

as we keep watch in the darkling night,

the slumbering stillness

of the breath held

until the stars blink and yawn, stretch,

and fade with the lightening sky.

 

While the earth waits and shadows play games,

visions of past wrongs accuse,

demand justice: atonement or forgiveness,

and peace comes on the horizon

by light or by blood.

 

*Had a completely different poem enter my head but I was caught in the middle of something and couldn’t write it down right away. The only line that I kept was “by light or by blood”. I was thinking of a story I heard about the Crusades, how the men would keep watch in the night before battle and other similar stories. I then had a memory of someone telling me long ago that matins was a version of that (to keep evil from coming in the night) and my brain correlated that with depression. Many is the time I have battled my thoughts in the dark and with the dawn sleep came, and a small semblance of peace. But there were times when, in the darkest point of the night, that I thought I wouldn’t make it. By light or by blood; life or death.