Urban Shadow

Today, I actually posted a story wirelessly with a very weak signal.

I was going to parade my success on the glory of it all.

Just as I was getting ready to save the draft, it went into cyberpurgatory.

So, more on that later.

A bright promising post is approaching.

This is from

Tirades And Evidence Of Grace,
Plain View Press, 1992

I was traveling across a vibrant plain,
green, on a walk that ran alongside a
wide road where cars, buses and trolleys
exchanged in endless chains of motion.
Wires strung up high above the metropolis
connected micro to macro, small to large.

I saw oversized sky scrapers on the far
side of a ravine I recognized from childhood
and the shadows they cast out spread waves
of darkness and desolation
-sharp contrast to bright green healing growing plants.
And I was moving toward the shadow.

The instant I crossed into it
darkness became so vast I lost direction,
froze. It was completely unfinished
- black, empty and cold. It was the rough
shadow of the psyche, of humankind, of winter
solstice, the underside of history.

It was my shadow, a projection from my
soul, my wall, my problem, my chaotic heart,
my instant of terror and I felt it engulf
me in a total emptiness more
powerful than the white light
which I have also seen.

Often since then I have sat curled up,
arms wrapped around knees, and rocked,
aching for something ending, reeling
from shock, trembling in anger at people
I hardly know, crying, shrieking.
I can barely function.

I suppose it was a vision.
I suppose there is a message on the far side
of the darkness I need to understand
or decode. But I have felt defeated
and minuscule since I felt the power of
the shadow, and how cold it is.
I think it can kill me.

I think it is your shadow too.
I think it can kill you and your children
and my children and everything I understand.
I think it is my fault.
I think it is your fault.
I think it has mass and is a tangible
result of a logic that shuts down the heart.

©Susan Bright

Susan Bright is the author of nineteen books of poetry. She is the editor of Plain View Press which since 1975 has published one-hundred-and-fifty books. Her work as a poet, publisher, activist and educator has taken her all over the United States and abroad. Her most recent book, The Layers of Our Seeing, is a collection of poetry, photographs and essays about peace done in collaboration with photographer Alan Pogue and Middle Eastern journalist, Muna Hamzeh.


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