I fell into sleep one moonless night

like a stone into deep water

and found myself barefoot on an empty road

beneath a starless sky. 

 

There stood a man in black

his head haloed by the full white moon,

waiting for me where the road met a hill.

Beyond it was nothing but darkness

and the distant sound of the sea.

 

I reached him on the bluff and

fell into step beside him,

walking towards the sound of waves on the shore. 

 

His eyes were the blueblack of a crow’s wing

and they held eternity in them as he looked at me

with an impossible melancholy.

I asked him for this name and 

when he spoke it was a quiet, mournful sound

that made something in me ache to hear it.

 

I am the dark sea in storm, drowning sailors on black nights

I am the willow by which a man is hanged, the noose around his neck

I am the cool deep earth in which old bones rest.

I have no name.

 

We walked further.

The dust from the road became a

cloud around my ankles

and the dirt was cool beneath my feet.

I asked him again for his name.

​

I am the hill before the setting sun

I am the distant horizon of the sea

I am the cliff at the edge of the world.

I have no name.

 

We walked up the cliff where

the road was unbroken,

a shifting white path beneath the waves,

shining like bone in the silver light.

I asked him again for his name.

 

I am the shadow on the moon

I am the winter wind

I am death.

I have no name.

 

Why am I here? I asked. Where goes this road?

The edge of his cloak brushed my arm,

and a phantom chill touched my skin

like the first frost of autumn.

The road goes to eternity, Death said softly,

One day you will walk it with me.

He looked down at the churning sea, the white froth.

Jump, he said finally, fall. Wake.

 

I turned at his words

but then I was falling off the cliff,

tumbling into the tumultuous tide.

I woke with a jolt in the blackness of my room,

salt on my lips.