The Fade

By Cliff Lake

 The Fade

 

A starless night full of futile sound:

Low murmurs and susurrations,

Unintelligible, full of vacuous meaning.

He strains to find sense in it,

A thread to dangle from,

A context for him,

Existence seems cheap,

Given, but unasked for.

 

He sits staring at a featureless sky,

A gray man beneath the gray firmament.

The low intonation is flat and undetailed,

A concurrence of noise,

A mush of sighs and mutterings,

A chorus of emptiness.

He feels that it speaks of nothing,

A beckoning to no one that calls to him.

 

A fog begins to slink in,

An obscuration underscoring.

Details fade, swirls of mist coalesce and smooth,

Even the streetlamps are obscured.

The low mumble is now nearly deadened,

The mist is a completion of erasure,

A tale of unbeing.

He begins to feel he has become unreal.


This is the void.

Here is the nothing,

This is the nowhen.

There is nothing to be seen,

There is nothing that can be heard.

A nonbeing of existence.

It simply is without input,

It requires nothing of him.

 

It is comfortable here, in a nowhere that surrounds.

He feels unbound, unstructured,

He feels.

Inside, a phone rings, hauling him back.

He stands to open the door, glancing back.

The welcoming fog gives no sign...

There are bills to pay.

He sighs and steps through his doorway, and back into his life.

 

Cliff Lake 2/10/2023

Copyright © Clifford Lake 2023

Location: Dalton, MA, USA

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