I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you. — T.S. Eliot
We do, each of us, move like the sun
from one crest to another. Though
some have learned to turn,
follow shadows in the evening,
go where they lean.
There, they say, in the dark
pockets that form as we stride,
where the light can't quite
touch the ground,
we might find a spare second (or two)
cresting like an opal in the sand.
And some, in turning, have learned
to pause. Secure with Venus
rising at their back, they watch
the land bleed into sky as
night falls and the two become
indistinguishable.
They are the ones who don't fear
the dust, because sometime long ago
they learned to play with it, to gather
it up in fists and pour it over their
scraped and bug-bitten legs until
they felt the earth's pulse
beneath their skin.
They are the ones whose feet,
untethered, lift from the warm red dirt,
whose mind, unbothered,
won't discern which way is up
or which is down
or where the wind will take them.
Left with the imprint of an eastward
gaze, they can only imagine
where they are and what they will do
and whose arms they hear
stroking the air beside them.
They are the ones who have found
the question half buried on the path:
what happens when
the land becomes the sky?
They are the ones who say
there is wonder
in a handful of dust.
June 8, 2025
For my nephew on the day of his birth.