Walter McDonald, "A Woman Acquainted with the Night"

My wife is not afraid of dark.
She uses lights like handholds,
climbing down caverns she accepts as found.
She is as comfortable as blossoms

when the sun goes down.
Forests we've camped in at night
are forests, to her, clear-eyed,
seeing no visions she can't

blink away. In sudden dark,
she goes on mending clothes by feel
while I sweat and rage
to make the spare fuse fit.

When she was six a fat man
digging a storm cellar
shut her and a friend inside,
stood on the black steel door

and stomped like thunder.
Frozen, too frightened to reach
for Becky screaming in her ears,
she felt nothing could ever

be that dark again. In time
the door clanged open and light
baptized her with perhaps
too deep a trust in saviors.

She lies down now in darkness
with no human hand but mine
to cling to, nothing but faith
in the moment to let her sleep. 

When storms short out
the relay stations, she knows
how to touch me, how to make
romance of failure,

knows like blind friends
how many steps to the candles
so if our children wake and cry
for light, there will be light.
Walter McDonald

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