Uploaded on March 8, 2012
I worship shadows like my daughter worships sun.
I don’t mean those so crisp and dark
beneath a noon-time sun,
or shadow soldier squads
before a picket fence. Those underneath
a harvest moon are more my style; the way
they hide and watch
from low bushes, then dance around
the lifted skirts of swaying trees,
like witches in a forest glen.
I’ve lured them home with low-watt bulbs
in gargoyle sconces under overhangs.
At night my friends uncoil
on walks and walls, then call me to their yard
to stroll and see my life in grays and blacks.
And in my den the shy ones come to watch
me read by candlelight. They come, pull back,
grow bold, then sly; so while I sip my scotch
and swirl the ice I’m not alone. I’m not
depressed.
—William Roetzheim
The Giant Book of Poetry
03.08.20224: It’s so interesting to see now what we were unable to see then.