Is there anything behind the façade
of performance and pretence
any bottom to the abyss
of self-doubt and self-condemnation?

Stretches of the road
are long and lonely times of bleak unknowing
plagued by anxiety, uncertainty
memories burdened by guilt, inadequacy,
ineptitude, inaction, time not taken to listen

and there is no dawn
no other side.

– Noel Davis, ‘And there is no dawn’, in Together at the Edge – Trust Me: One Live to Live, Love, Reverence, Give Thanks (Narooma: Lifeflow Education, 2011).

[Image: Songs from the Forest]