(for Uncle Bruce)
The Building of Shadows
The building stands empty.
Only memory plays in it's once busy rooms.
Like projected images, books and papers rest on shelves and cupboards.
Cushions and sheets rest on couches and beds.
Kitchen chairs rest with boots under tables.
Flower pots and stray socks rest on coloured threads and boards.
However, this rest is a particular rest and an uneasy one.
Not the uneasiness of the calving heifer, that which proffers newness, no.
Not that restless rest that beleaguers the child on the eve of Christmas.
Not that uneven, uneasy rest that is natures breath,
the resting, cresting wave,
the unblinking cyclones eye,
that resting sie that lies amongst the weft and warft of the wind.
The latter are recurrent, as long as time cycles, so too will they. And as long as they cycle they will also rest, and rise from rest to cycle.
None of these are the type of rest that the house is slated too.
Theirs will be that rest that never rises.
No more shall their movement catch our eye, and in doing so, recut our memory.
So, even as we honour these fond images they can't help but lessen with the dilution of time.
This is where the uneasiness come from.
Fret not, I've found unfading legacy.
Not of chattels or of goods.
Never to recede into time like mind printed memes.
This, of no thing, is not nothing.
The shadow that this building cast was sharp and strong.
Unheeded by wonderers and wondered at by those that paused.
Some knew it's worth, though it buoyed and succoured all.
A touch, softer than an eyelashed blink.
That nurtured care and joy within its thoughts.
So what's to happen, will this shadow rest?
Let me tell an unease-ing tale for you.
The brilliant light that saw this building built shon, but only in the day.
Yes, moonlit nights may cast a shadow yet.
Sometime, both moon and sun are rostered to the day.
And cloudy nights allow no star fed glow to smudge the ground.
So in the shadow we have no constant lineage.
It is not sustained through every night.
But shall, in every morn be there.
As if it never went.
You say, you twit, it's made again each day.
I say, to what design. What holds its DNA?
Dispel belief and let perhaps have play.
Imagine this ephemeral is, without light.
Like an object in a dark room it doesn't form on interrupting light.
The tree exists independent of the observer.
This shadow exists independent of photons.
Now made, the shadow is not touched by time.
You again may say, it exists in portentia.
I say, it was and always now will be.
I say, it is.
Let time, like soapy water against my clothes, dilute my coloured memories.
I have unease with this, but such is the way of days.
For I have been touched by a shadow that days cannot erode.
I close my eyes and still I feel it's weight.
Like a thought full purse of possibility.
This great building may fade but its shadow knows my name.
JMD
19th of October, 2018