Going Back Alone

Going Back Alone
I remember watching the woods as they sunk into darkness.
As a child I left the others behind and walked back alone.

The night was silent, except for the snapping of twigs,
or rustling and crunching of leaves, the pounding of my heart.

I didn’t imagine the wind, crossing my path by chance,
or rushing at me like blackness, or glaring with yellow eyes.

I didn’t walk for long, but ran all the way down
talking to myself as if surrounded by friends.

And yet there was nothing, no one. I couldn’t stop stumbling
down the sloped trail, barely keeping balance.

Was it the shadows, or the silence that pushed me?
I saw the trees as a gray cage; I heard the scattering of feet.

Sometimes, I feel as lost, as hopeless as my childhood,
running alone in the dark, listening to myself breathe.

I remember mainly the fear of never getting out again,
of never seeing the lit windows, or hearing the laughter of family.

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Well here's another poem about silence. I guess it's something I've been thinking about lately. I don't like it and I don't think I ever have. This poem takes one of my childhood memories and relates it to today, how the same fears still apply, although perhaps in a different sense. The actual story is this: Some cousins, some siblings, and I were on top of Fake Thistle Hill in VT and as it was getting dark, I wanted to go back down before the woods got too dark, 'cause I was already scared of the dark, and even more so in Vermont because its so country and I imagined wolves and bears and such. However, no one else wanted to come back down at the time; they were doing something else like practicing throwing knives. So I started going down on my own. And then I started to run, running all the way as fast as I could, taking the shortest route down the hill, taking the path down to my Aunt Lydia's home, which was steep. And it wasn't easy because the trees are pretty thick and the trail wasn't that easy to see. I did eventually make it down, but it's one of my main memories of being scared of the dark.