Shadows
I think I caught our shadows holding hands
While walking with you down the garden path.
I heard an impish giggling behind, and quick
I spun around to wither with a scornful eye
The little child who had so easily revealed
A secret which I thought I’d carefully concealed
Behind a veil of quips and chatter.
That’s when I saw them, just a moment, mind—
For just as quick they snapped back to the sun.
I glared a while longer to be sure they knew,
But as we set ourselves once more along the path
I faintly heard the muffled laughter once again
Of two young lovers who care not to hide within
A truth so plain and rightly simple.
But these light dalliances must be kept in check
Lest one forgets responsibility
And obligations to the less forgiving world
Of social norms and rules for how things ought to be.
I chained him to the sun’s reflection of my lie;
How thin and drawn he grew beneath my watchful eye,
And silent but for echoed weeping.
Eventually he withered and was gone.
Dissolved, it seemed, from pining for his love.
Whereas the fisherman had taken the cursed knife
And rent his shadow from his body like a fool,
How easily he could have let it float away
Had he the strength of mind to on the dry land stay
And leave his love on sandy beaches.
A man without a shadow’s quite a thing.
Though most cannot say why my empty face
And hurried steps betray some stifled tragedy.
For now my chest conceals a yet much greater pain
Of trying to believe to never love at all
More noble than to love and lose. For pain recalled
Will fill the empty glass of wonder.
I never saw him hence, and lived the pain
Of one who lost the body of his soul.
But for one morning as the sun just barely peeked,
I heard the laughter once again, and saw him there
Beside his love. He smiled and gently took her hand,
Together, to fly off to some enchanted land.
He had not dissolved. He ran away.