Shadow Walker

The morning had strapped the yoke of the day upon its shoulders
And pulled the light from the evening sky

A rambling stream of polished clouds followed, and under the sweat of dew a torrent of crimson burst from darkness into spring

But there was a shadow walker among the birdsong

Between the moss struggling for green
A casting out like some great mountain
The forrest floor fissured and snapped under his step

A path was driven from the ebbing calm
Nascent was the sun imploring light upon his back
Drying his blood jagged and rocky like an ancient shore

His love fading as the mists receded shyly from their midnight nests

And out from under the caring arms of the elderly tree it burst plainly into view, a knobby fenced acre, sending golden wheat, eye-lashing about among the afternoon breezes.  The clearing shot overgrowth and tears into his eyes  The children's voices lifting the air soft and bright and new, and as the door of the vested house opened, his seraphic love appeared draped in pleat and cotton  Golden like the wheat, like the twin vestige of innocence, like days between bloom and summer, she stepped from parlor to plain lightly into the blue

And then the shadows came again

Kneeling as most men do before the night; he evaporated away into the currents of mist and fog

Lonely like stag and moon and wind.