Necessity

"This above all - ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write?" 

- Rainer Maria Rilke

so i stretch inwards into myself, where,

   buried beyond understanding,

lies my heart 

    - but it gives no reply. i wonder:

has it grown mute from neglect
or fallen asleep in the broad daylight,

into a peaceful rest? should i wait idly
by for future pain to awaken it rudely, to
stir up passion that rises up like a swelling
wave at the high tide of the evening, against
the background of a dying sun, a protest against
the oncoming darkness? 

is now the time for searching, 

to store up, to be still -   

the pale period of hibernation before 

the creature emerges out of its cave 

into a bright new world that blinds 

and dazzles it with complexities

painfully wound around every experience,

inspiring the intensity that presses the pen
into paper and impresses meaning onto material -
before life?

but no, there is always a need -

for who knows when wonder will dry up and
leave the soil of the heart barren with indifference
and the gentle light by which infant eyes 

see the world is torn away by time, in its great envy
of youth, and they begin to adapt to the darkness?