My Shadow and I

My shadow, meanwhile, is bundled up inside me like a lonely cloud rolled up with many others to form a single thick covering overhead. I long for the clarification of sunlight to let my shadow stand proud of me. But I know too that I have to draw my shadow out, to pull it into the light. If it appears too soon will it have found release? Or will it be forced to retreat again into its undistinguished cover?

I don't know what this shadow is. It represents the degree to which I have clarified myself. I am not fit to stand under a new sun unless I have expelled this blackness. It is the darkness of the year, the cold, the unloved, the hurting side of me. It is the side which must crave its own excess until it can bear it no longer. I love my shadow and my shadow pretends to love me. But really it sings its song for the lost sunlight it remembers like a dim dream. It holds its candle for that light.

I'll make myself clear by living out of the light. I'll shun the early growth and wait for the full tide of spring. I'll talk to my shadow, creep into its lair, tease it out from its own concealed shape. We'll become friends, my shadow and I. I'll tell it stories of life under the sun, of creatures that fly, of leaves that light like candles. I'll promise not to leave its side. At last, in trust and faith that day will come when I can lead my shadow out from me, into the open silence, the cloudless light. And then I will know I have arrived.


Yes, hearth, light, song – these things have moved away;
disgruntled skies pour answers on the earth
to questions no one asked or thought to say:
do we grow old for nothing? has life worth?
I would stay buried, hibernating deep,
unless I thought my shadow could appear
above the ground, and stay and feel life leap -
but still I’d need to know what makes it dear.

Jay

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

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Author: Jay Landar
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