Shadowed
A walking poem
We walk in morning shadows,
the sky as dark at 6:30 as it was at midnight —
small figures with lumpy backpacks,
looking like toy camels,
scurry on dim sidewalks
to a school bathed in artificial light.
Why do we mess with time and light
and all that is natural and right?
My sadness feels at home in the shadows,
unseen, unmeasured, unmentioned —
no need to mask or hide or cloak
the gloom that resides inside —
in the light, I camouflage
but not here, not now.
My heart is cracked from loss,
my body is weary from work,
my eyes are wet with tears —
I feel out-of-place and displaced
in a country of disgrace.
I don’t know where I am
or how I got here —
I don’t know who we are,
don’t understand where
we are going —
not in the light of day,
not in the shadows of morning.
The personal and the national
swirl together in upendedness,
feeling foreign in the place of my birth,
feeling disoriented in my mind,
feeling clutched in my heart.
The dog is disheartened —
squirrels are still bedded while
we walk in a morning
too shadowed for walking,
in a world too dark for living
The birds begin their dawn song,
a hawk squawks and flies low,
the cars gather in squiggly lines
moving to a place other than here —
the day begins before night ends.
And, we walk in morning shadows
looking for light that the sky can’t provide,
looking for relief in air heavy with hate,
looking for home in this unknown land.
Why do we mess with time and light
and all that is natural and right?
