When the Stars Seem Silent

By Mark Bishop

On a starless autumn eve in a graveyard at rest beneath the shroud of darkness sat a maiden, fair, and sorry for life's toll

She mourned for life cast too soon into yonder field and stoney bosom

Time, anxious to leave this piteous haunt hastened onward until the moon shown bright above the leafless trees and cast it's glow on every quivering tear

They fell from beauty and smote themselves upon the sod

'round the corner of the sepulcher at which the maiden wept

a ghoul waited in silence enchanted by this twilight dirge, this fount of crystals

For a long hour he stood and stirred not as the maiden cried

And all that was dead amongst his crooked limbs and gnarled flesh yearned for life

He shambled forward startling his midnight guest

She gasped and cowered backward

Her form, pale as it was awash in the warm lunar tide became frozen and ivory

The ghoul stopped. And spoke softly.

"Tell, what sorrow spurns sleep and bids even the night to suffer broken hearts?

Perhaps two may bare more patiently the afflictions of life."

These words seemed spoken by the darkness itself, for surely the tattered lips before her were long since bled of such kindness

And yet his gaze from gentle jaundiced eyes extended to her the same offer

Seeing that, like her, he was well acquainted with death and suffered still under its heavy hand

She replied to the darkness and added to its depth

"Here lies the body of my father, his soul not yet accounted for

Perhaps the stars can tell but tonight they hide

how can hope be such a small light? such a distant thing not radiant but flickering... and almost gone"

Her words struck the ghoul where his heart should have been for he had been a father

and he had left a son

and he would come, and cry, and break his soul against the walls of stone and lose his voice among the rocks

"My dear, there is pain so great not even the stars dare answer,

Even the watchman of the ages cannot hold back the night.

But hope,

hope is like the moon,

It shall rise and show most brightly on the eve of your despair.

It harkens you to daylight and reminds you of the sun."