Escape to Freedom

A poem about this artwork

The year drifts toward dark December – and darker beyond.
My thoughts turn dark.
Loves lost, long dead, none to come.
Old griefs seem fresh wounds.
My sister accuses me of melancholy.
I know it is at least half true. But I do not
let sisters – or dark- define me, I shriek.
(Dark so interwoven with the light there is no unraveling it.)
No wonder at this time of year we long
for the light-bringing child.
No wonder we buy too many presents
as if this could turn back
the dark of the Earth’s turning,
the dark running through our own veins.

The best human I ever knew-
eyes lamps of wisdom,

mercy and compassion-
whose good works were as numerous
as the multitudes who followed his hearse –
could strike out against those he loved.
The innocent baby uses a chubby hand
to turn the dial of the gas stove
though she has been told “no!”
A family divides over choice of coffin
for grandmother – and siblings do not speak
for decades. Now, each is older
than grandmother in the grave.
And so it goes with nations. War.

What is this dark biology that courses through us?
Dark fury to be loved,
to prevail. to possess,
to escape the desert of lonely existence.
Rail against our dark natures.

I begin painting a nightscape—
blue-black sky and river,
and through the dark barely
visible, a lamp in the window
across the water, moonlight
catching the bow of a small boat.
It is titled “Night Crossing.”
Slaves are making the crossing this night to freedom.
I daub a bit of silver onto the lamp
to make it glow against the somber
browns and blacks.

I work in the kitchen now
to be nearer the warmth and light.
These words, this picture, are my refuge
against the dark that comes.

Mo Conlan

Blue Happy

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