Penny Harter

Shadow World

It does not follow you like

the dependable companion

you’ve courted since childhood,

played hopscotch with, met in

a schoolyard jump-rope game,

or seen over your shoulder

dogging your steps in the sun

like a doppelganger flirting

with the several other selves

you might have been. It doesn’t

stretch across the road, cast from

sunset in a tree, leaf shadows

quivering in the autumn wind,

leached of red and gold as they

receive their quantum twins.

But it lurks behind your eyes,

flickers in the dark of a village

on a map you haven’t read yet,

luring you to trust and follow it

as if it were a summer solstice

sunrise cradled between stones.

Against the Dark

As the planet tilts toward winter

here in the Northern Hemisphere,

each day's sun sinking earlier into

the thinning trees, the angels of light

who hide in the human heart

remember that they must begin

to open and close their wings,

must work at beating back

the vast wing of night that sweeps

its shadow round and round the Earth.

The moon and stars are distant

beacons in the fabric from which

we are torn–our mortal flesh

a shining that sustains us

in the work we all must learn

to do against the dark.

Hearing Voices

They can speak from anywhere,

though speak is not exactly what they do—

sending a blue mist up from the skin

of a river as it runs beneath a bridge

you are crossing, or kicking dust

from the throat of a roadside bush.

Perhaps the dead use these elements

like ear trumpets—those funnels

tilted toward the ceilings of darkened

rooms, inviting the disembodied

to slide through and ride on the wind

of mutual breath, funnels aimed to capture

wisps of sound and hold them against

the heartbeats of the living.

So settle down and lean your weary back

against the flimsy guard-rail on the bridge,

or sit cross-legged in the dirt at the altar

of an almost burning bush. Fine tune

your instrument to hear beyond the static

of passing tanks and roadside bombs,

and listen.

© Penny Harter

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