The Evolution of Night

[image from flickr.com]

The prompt at Poets United's Thursday Think Tank is: Nighttime

I took something I wrote years ago about memories of the nighttime throughout my life, and tweaked it just a bit, to show what nightttime has been like for this human, on her long journey from childhood to peace and happiness.  Not much of a poem, but my brain is too tired for rhyming right now, I am still recovering from my move.

Night
when the small child wakes
to drunken  thumps and crashes
and screams
from the living room,
and lies shivering with fear
 in bed
until the fighting stops.

Night
when the young girl dreams
that love will come
and bring her
the home
she has
always wanted.

Night
when the baby wakes
and the young mother takes him
to her breast,
watching out the window,
waiting for daybreak,
cocooned in a warm,
sweet world of two,
her heart full with, finally,
someone to love.

Night
when the husband
furiously harrangues,
night after night,
into the early hours:
her lacks, her faults,
his needs not being met,
what-is-it-that-you-want,
what's wrong with you?

Night
when he finally leaves,
the barrage stops,
relief,
her life restored to her.

Night
when she discovers
what love
between a man
and a woman
can be.
Night of ecstasy
and wonder.

Night
when he leaves too,
because he "has to be free"
and, besides,
he has two new girlfriends now.
But thanks, and here's one tear,
for remembering.

Night.
Of despair. Of despair.
The long night of the heart,
when it is frozen,
asleep, refusing to be roused.

Night
that one keeps waking from
because one must,
and because,
over time,
the rosy sunrise
keeps on winning.

Many, many nights,
till the heart
finally
comes home
to a place of fullness,
where there is
no pain.
Aware that the world
is full of weeping, hungry,
frightened children,
damaged, drunken adults
and danger in the night.
But believes more
in the way the world
wakes fresh and brand new
every morning,
with the chance
to do things better,
and builds a life on that.

Night
when it
at last
becomes a friend
to an old tired soul
nearing the end of
such a long journey,
when bed is
a place of rest
and comfort,
where one pulls
the covers up
over her shoulders
in a silent, peaceful home
and the heart is
completely
at rest.