Night Visions

I wake to darkness. This is nothing new. Sleep often eludes me in the deepest hours of night.

Turning to my left, I try to settle into the sheets, find my way back to slumber. My mind fills with visions, abstract. Picture after picture, until I feel I must be spinning. I will never remember all this, never be able to put it on paper. A desperate sense overcomes me, the way one must feel when grasping twine that is slipping away.

So I try to quiet myself and enjoy the parade... a vortex picture that looks something like a nest or a window to another world, green swirls that might be an ocean surging, a black whorl bleeding red into cobalt and purple... on and on. If I watch closely, maybe I will take some of these into the next day, find them under my pastels.

Then there will be the moment I wait for... after the picture is formed, like Adam-dust almost alive, I will choose where to shine the light and bring it to life, photograph the "it is good" and send it to cyberland, to you.

'Arise' in soft pastel, by L.L. Barkat.