I’ve known you
for 60 years
and yet I don’t,
pulling you by the
leash as though a
mongrel,
shrieking , kicking
up a storm,
and not when it’s
been raining , the
hatches battened
down,
but on the days
of clearest
cyan, the poppies
stretching to meet
the shine of Sol,
knowing truth
is seldom seen
within the tunnels
of the dark,
that I have been
the shadow
all my life,
dragged along
the walls
whenever the scrape
of a match
is heeded,
the burst from a bulb
above me,
in the pall of
twelve a.m.,
my silhouette’s
lengthening hand
an elastic band,
a rubbery Reed
Richards—
grasping the closest
window near the
corner, open to the
air through which to
soar,
a place in which to flee
what light reveals,
the sunless
side of the moon
we never see.
Andreas Gripp
September 19, 2024
RF Image
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