Poem 191

Without darkness there’s no light, as they say – but they tend not to mention how skewed the  proportions are, the overwhelming majority of the universe being made up of dark matter, the world of light minuscule against the black velvet backdrop …

( I like all of this, every image reverberates, for example the cool dark clockwork of a day or light as a tensile insect …
… the frozen-moment shadow of kids tossing a ball is borrowed from a Ray Bradbury short story … the last image owes something to a trippy seventies poster I had which featured a giant carp rising to swallow the moon … )

Shadows

Shadows are our best saviours
reminding light of its limits letting us
shine beside them a rainbow of flesh
man shadow woman shadow
the children and the ball passing
on the brick wall
all the cool dark clockwork of a day

from the single cut-out shape at your feet
a thousand rain upward at evening
drifting like ash lying arm to arm on the water
tangling down light and slipping it in their pockets
as unnoticed as blood
in blood

shadows crawl on the moon
crowd into black pyramids behind the planets
at the petering end of it all light
spindles into a tensile insect
that a mouth of shadow rises
from the shadow
           to take