What we call Dark – a poem by Matthew Pullar

What we call Dark

is often what we don't understand, or cannot yet
explain. Dark as in: unseeable; not observed.
The inside of the box. Beyond the boundary.

The energy stretching the universe
faster than reason can catch. The matter that,
unseen, drives gravity mad.

But these too are dark: the consciousness
that torments itself with unknowable things;
the inside of the apple; the underside

of the serpent's tongue; the knowledge that,
once tasted, darkens like fruit rotting
out of its place. Some darkness

comforts, shields from day's fire
and its scrutinising eyes. Some hides
its own darkness inside it, the deeds

that even evil shames to think of.
And some – the thick darkness
where Moses found God – is only

dark in its mystery. Nothing to fear,
although fearsome. May we
reach for You in our knowing

and our unknowing too,
prepared, like the possum with its
tail black as night I saw scampering

through the forest, sure in
its maker's nocturnal providence,
the treasures of the dark.

Matthew Pullar is a Melbourne-based poet. He has had poems published in Ekstasis, Poems for Ephesians, Amethyst Review, Fare Forward and Reformed Journal. Most recently, his collection of poems, This Teeming Mess of Glory (Wipf & Stock, 2025) was shortlisted for Australian Christian Book of the Year.