06-01-2014, 02:37 PM
I read Jung once while falling asleep in the cold dawn
My shadow doesn’t need to write things down. Her head
is not a rising tide or a baseball stadium full of drunks. I can’t
keep a grocery list in mine for more than five minutes
especially not when comparing prices bleached out rows of leeks and oranges
or trying to remember the names of white flowers now peeking through the branches.
This is a point of contention at home where my other half, the human half
and not my shadow, doesn’t realize what he’s missing. Or not missing.
My shadow only saunters into the kitchen for tea and knows the weight
of a menu better than a chef’s knife. Other knifes are another story.
She doesn’t need to write lists, plans, praises, laments. They come to her
bidden, a pack of wagging dogs:
easily called up and dismissed. I would call them poems
but she calls them talk, the talk we all do when waiting or when
the train lows like a beast, some great sad beast,
perhaps one that has not walked this earth for millions of years.
She doesn’t think of millions of years or even of yesterday.
This makes conversation difficult.
Her gray hair gets longer and longer but never
appears to tangle or break, even when my whole body has become a tangle
of muscle and reed, a tangle of a million limbs in bed or in the rush
to get on and off the subway. Her turquoise nails draw
animal figures in the air. She is shades away from becoming
an animal, from breaking into storm.
At a gathering of gods from places long forgotten she is carrying trays
and bundling white tulips and long grass to give to the leaving, those leaving down
the long and sun-baked steps.
My shadow pretends she does not need connection to the divine
to the round faces carved thousands of years ago in stone,
but only to the beastly clouds tracking across the sky, in the grass.
She prays beneath the statues and the stained glass.
I have seen her at this, my shadow wearing a robe of red light.
My shadow doesn’t need to write things down. Her head
is not a rising tide or a baseball stadium full of drunks. I can’t
keep a grocery list in mine for more than five minutes
especially not when comparing prices bleached out rows of leeks and oranges
or trying to remember the names of white flowers now peeking through the branches.
This is a point of contention at home where my other half, the human half
and not my shadow, doesn’t realize what he’s missing. Or not missing.
My shadow only saunters into the kitchen for tea and knows the weight
of a menu better than a chef’s knife. Other knifes are another story.
She doesn’t need to write lists, plans, praises, laments. They come to her
bidden, a pack of wagging dogs:
easily called up and dismissed. I would call them poems
but she calls them talk, the talk we all do when waiting or when
the train lows like a beast, some great sad beast,
perhaps one that has not walked this earth for millions of years.
She doesn’t think of millions of years or even of yesterday.
This makes conversation difficult.
Her gray hair gets longer and longer but never
appears to tangle or break, even when my whole body has become a tangle
of muscle and reed, a tangle of a million limbs in bed or in the rush
to get on and off the subway. Her turquoise nails draw
animal figures in the air. She is shades away from becoming
an animal, from breaking into storm.
At a gathering of gods from places long forgotten she is carrying trays
and bundling white tulips and long grass to give to the leaving, those leaving down
the long and sun-baked steps.
My shadow pretends she does not need connection to the divine
to the round faces carved thousands of years ago in stone,
but only to the beastly clouds tracking across the sky, in the grass.
She prays beneath the statues and the stained glass.
I have seen her at this, my shadow wearing a robe of red light.