Shadow Writing

Ladies and (possibly) gentleman, I have done it again. I have written a poem that I'd quite like to share. This is somewhat nerve-wracking and I am begining to think it would be interesting to take part in a poetry workshop, as I can see plenty of room for improvement in my poems, but can't find the way forward myself. Have any of you done anything like that?

Shadow Writing

Here in the early morning sun,
Writing in prayer journals and morning pages,
My shadow follows my pencil, meeting the paper just where my pencil leaves its mark.
Who is leaving the mark,
My shadow or me?
Who is directing, and who is following,
My shadow, or me?

Is my shadow the anxious, thoughtless, must-get-on, must-cope, mustn’t-think-about-it self
Who tumbled through this life in the sunshine,
Spreading little streaks of darkness
Where before there had been light?

If it is, I want to be the writer,
Conscious and aware of all the good,
Soaking in the light and beauty of this day,
This place,
These people,
This life.

I want to be the leader, and my shadow the follower.

I want to turn to the sun and leave my shadow to follow behind.

My life is with the sun, not in the shadow.

On a different road

I took a drive today, without my camera! Grr. I was going to assess a pupil and I have to tell you I was really excited to learn where he lived, because of the road there! I'm not even sure that photographs would capture it for you anyway, so I've taken the liberty (and possibly leave of my senses) to write you a poem about it instead:

On a different road

On a different road, today,
The High Road, the Top Road, she called it.

The memory of an earlier journey:
A landscape that dropped away from the car towards a jewel-bright reservoir and then reared up again into tumbling hills.
Gates.
A chateau.
Houses, old and new, perched high on the ridge on my right, to drink in the view.

I wanted to take that road again.

Anticipation, knowing the view is coming,
as I drive along the High Road, the Top Road.
Something has already changed – here the trees are thicker, the colours older and richer.

The view is coming.

Past the hedge and the landscape drops. The reservoir is an azure-green patch in the hills.
The fields are hazy with grey-blue stalks of straw, remains of the harvest.
The sky is another stroke of grey-blue.
If an artist painted it, she’d have to dilute inks until they were homeopathic drops in the water.
If an artist painted it I wouldn’t believe her – ‘too wish-washy,’ I’d say.
But I’d be wrong.
Here, on a different road, everything is hazy,
Everything is watered, everything is intense.

Back on my own road, the colours return to their normal strength.
The soil is a strong red-brown, the sky is cerulean blue.
But I turn and, there, on the horizon, just a streak of hazy grey-blue.