I've Been Trying To Write Some Darkness - Emmanuel Katto Uganda Poem by Emmanuel Katto

I've been trying to write some darkness
but there's a junco on my shoulder
so just when the shadows start to bend,
like snakes along a shaken earth
where howl of maddened fools
directed at the morbid moon
bloom forth from night's cocoon

--he cuts in

with his joyous tremolo
reminding me of daffodils
and chitter-chatter chickadees
chumming in the morning breeze
beneath a sky of bubbly blue;

of traveling letters
crawling through the mail
to carry smiles across long miles
between a mother and her son,
perfumed by purple hyacinth
in crispy tones of Spring.

I try to write of darkness,
and shake my fountain pen
up and down and down again
hoping for the flow of blackest ink;
for thunderclap from pouting clouds
lightning pounding hollow ground
but when the ballpoint rolls around
it's only sunshine spilling out,
with sounds of juncos thereabout.