Shadows

Shifting, drifting…
airs with faces
and imaginary graces
never firming to the touch…

Are you a shadow?
Am I?
Would you have me real?
Or I, you?

Shadows cast no pain, no joy.
Their suffering is not real,
their fading glamor,
passing clamor,
not much to be wondered at.
They neither harm nor charm,
pass one through another
with no consequence of caring,
nothing sharing…

Each shade
real only to itself
plays out its game with shadow pieces;
itself is played,
betrayed,
mislaid,
and never knows.

There is in Reality
much joy to be won or lost.
I would not play Reality
with just anyone.

CL Redding 2009, revised 2019