Come Darkness & Twilight Idyll

Come, Darkness

Come, Darkness, Wrap me in your ebon mantle as a shroud. Freed from wearied weariness may I find peace Lost within the mists of your unknowing cloud.

Come, Darkness, I have lived life to the full and seek release. Faithful, I have run the race and fought the fight. Hear my cry, and in your mercy, grant surcease.

Come, Darkness, Take me from this mortal life into your night. Lead me—raised by grace, unbroken and unbowed— Through your shadowed vale into eternal light.

Twilight Idyll

A low-lying sun within a cobalt sky Casts shadow-shrouds upon a dying day As luminous, back-lit clouds drift slowly by With gold and crimson fading into gray.

A charcoal sky unmasks a vast array Of Zodiacal stars which form a chain That points a rising moon along its way

Across a vast Pacific’s bounding main.

A softly-wafting puff of twilight air— A loving kiss as from a distant land— Drifts past and lightly stirs my hair As I, unmoving, stand on surf-smooth sand.

I turn, and in that cosmic, auric glow, My starlit footprints follow as I go.

James A. Tweedie is a recently retired pastor living in Long Beach, Washington. He likes to walk on the beach with his wife. He has written and self-published four novels and a collection of short stories. He has several hundred unpublished poems tucked away in drawers.