Tonight we turn the clocks back an hour, and invoke a little sooner the crisp and quiet nights of late Autumn. It's a time of shortening days and lengthening shadows, and it puts me in mind of a poem I wrote quite a few years back.Caught up in the solitude of an empty house, I lay in bed and watched the silhouettes of back-lit branches dance against my walls. There was something magical in the interplay of moonlight, wind and trees at that moment, and I tried to capture the sense of it in the following irregular lines.
Shadowed Box
By Francis Scudellari
This shadowed box of light,
moon projected on my wall,
a moving portrait, screened,
hung above my head,
is my soul
entertainment
as I lie
through the night;
a stick-dance stage upon which
my beloved
ghosts will play.
Now lurking behind folds of cloth,
their jagged silhouettes
will burst forth
only in closed
eye sleep,
to dance in spell-cast dreams,
and beckon me
toward that portal
through which,
if I find my belief,
I might step,
only to be washed away
with morning
and the sun's flooding rays.
2 comments:
What wonders of words written by you Francis! Sad dreams must be seemingly all but forgotten before the dawn of day. If we could but capture them all, what poes and stories might one be able to pen, leaving many longing for more silhouettes.
I think that if I ever were to try to capture the dreams that populate my nights, people would be taken aback by the twisted workings of my sleeping brain. The waking dreams I have are much more coherent and interesting :).
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