Midnight Garden

A poem created after a dream in a cemetery.

The raven's cry rings piercingly

Across the midnight garden.

Its raspy voice a welcomed break

From the silence all around.

Its ebony eyes reflect the moon

That hovers o'er the icy land

Granting but a meager light

To view the cold and lonely sight

Of restless souls walking through the night

As they seek to find a way to right

The wrongs that they have done.

I understand quite intimately

How they feel wallowing in their sin

Reaching out to find a way

To escape the binding mire

Theirsouls are trapped within.

Yet knowing however hard they fight

This is their bitter end.

There is no hope in the darkness.

The Raven brings no reprieve.

He only comes to watch and laugh

As they struggle and weep.

They are the dead and I am alive,

Or at least that is what I am told

But if I am truely living

Why is my heart so cold?

Why do I feel neither love nor pain?

Why do my tears not fall like rain

For this world that abandoned me

So many years ago.

I should be down there with them

Forever walking among the stones

That mark the graves which hold the bones

Of the lost and forlorn souls

Trapped in the midnight garden.

Eric Bradley Fletcher

Copyright © 2009

Author's Note

Ideas anyone?