A young lady in black stepped around a corner, deliberately facing the poet.

 “Do you seek the darkest shadow?” she asked.

 “Yes, I know it is someplace near.”

 “Do you find it by scent or by track?”  Her face was tanned by the moon.  There was an odor of patchouli and cardamom about her.

“It is the vacuum I seek to fill,” he replied.  Lightning in his eyes illuminated the way.  “Are you familiar with the night?”

 “In my dreams, we fly.”  She looked about apprehensively and urged him to move along.  “Don’t let’s stand here for too long.  There are fearful, ignorant eyes peering through window panes.”

 “And if there are, then let them witness this,” he wheeled about, proudly jutting out his chest while she clung to his arm and sought to lead him quietly away.

“They will see only what they want to see, and they will likely see the worst.”  She directed him into an alley and afterward stayed away from well-lit streets and open areas.  “We already have too much trouble with them.  It has become dangerous to caress the night.”

 “There are others?” the poet allowed the dark and moon-tanned woman to lead him along.

 “Our numbers are few,” she told him as they strode through the darkness, “and we have found it best to prowl the night unseen.”

 “You are the only other I have met.”

 “And you would not have seen me, if I had not stepped out to rescue you from walking about so openly.”

 “And why have you intercepted me?”

 “The spell of the night flows strong within you; it surges through you with a brightness which illuminates the world.”  There was a rustle of feathers as a black cape materialized to enfold her.  “Ravens are attracted to bright objects.”

 He lost her for a moment, but then she reappeared at a basement stairway leading down from the street into a building.  “Here is the darkest shadow.”

She swooped down the stairwell and disappeared before he could reach the steps.  There were the gray concrete stairs, each darker than the last until the bottom steps laid ensconced in deepest shadow.

 Thinking to escape the prying eyes of the street, the poet veered across an expansive meadow which opened quite suddenly to his left.  This field was so immense that the other end was lost in darkness.  Here was his hope for escaping the critical view, stifling in its intensity; here the freedom to explore his muse, extracting riches which might be better appreciated by the public in the light of day.  Still the constriction had not
eased, but rather intensified.  Looking about, he could see a crowd advancing upon him from across the field.  He tried to run, only to discover that his feet were mired in the dark, rich mud.

 The spiteful crowd drew ever closer while every attempt to escape sank him deeper into the mire.  He floundered up to his armpits in the black wet muck, slapping his arms on the surface.  Each step the crowd took seemed to choke him further, until he would be smothered completely and trod underfoot.

 A shadow passed over his head as he sank to the neck. Looking up, he saw a large raven fly overhead.  Then there was a shot in the night and the raven tumbled out of the sky.  The gun was cocked again, and now the poet could see it aimed at his head.  Reacting more by instinct than be thought, he sucked his head down into the mud and dove deep into the earth, inhaling the blackness, filling his lungs with the wet darkness, where he was cradled incubated, nursed and then sent forth.