The jagged sound dragged
me grittily from sleep;
though the night still clung darkly.
Damp stillness and piercing silence
deafened my ears.
Terror or awakening sense
to touch another soul
searching forlorn,
in the numbness of forever.
The hell of loneliness,
a brief call from the black.
Was it ghost, dream or the echo –
of another eon found in
the dead of space;
floating free, heard then gone
back to nowhere.
The shriek of time‘s cobbles
against the rim of eternity.
David Garlick, Victoria, June, 1996