Darkness my old friend…                          The Word. August 5th.2014

The after midnight blues. I awaken regularly at around four o’clock every morning whether or not the cock croweth or the pigeon cooeth or the drunk who wanders my street nightly shouting abuse at himself, disturbs me. It is a regular awakening and, for some reason, only the sound of rain soothes away the irritation. It is a dry night. Too weary to get up and make a cup of tea and too restless to go back to sleep. I watch the black spider on the streetlight lit white ceiling above my head and wonder if it be one of the venomous type. I read somewhere all spiders have a bite so I assume it best to keep my eye on it. The spider gets larger or smaller depending on how long I stare at it. My mood gets darker and life’s little difficulties, like the spider, seem to change in size depending on how much consideration I give them. At my age I know/knew a lot of dead people, loved ones, friends I think of often during my waking hours, friends I wish I had been closer to, more forgiving, more understanding as to their needs and I know it is now too late. Then I wonder about all of the live ones I don’t remember. I wonder if any of those still living ever lie awake and think of me and I doubt they do. You tend to think more about people when they are dead and gone than you do of the living. Not too late to tell the living how much you care for them, appreciate their love, their company, their sense of humour that so dovetails with your own and keeps you sane. How you delight in an evening ‘sundowner’ with friends even when you are low and down. The spider seems to have become stationary, is he thinking about me? How do you tell a male spider from a female spider? Does the female bite harder? Is the male an old grump who cannot sleep and is just sitting there upside down and thinking about me? I doze. Then, quite suddenly it is Tuesday morning, refuse collection day, and the town’s garbage collectors rattle the bins and chatter me awake and I roll over and sleep like a baby for a couple of hours. So why do I wake up at four in the morning and listen to all that the darkness tells me, and whatever happened to the spider no longer clinging to my ceiling?