The air is really very delicately affected
by a shadow.
It won’t blow through it.
It may lose its bearings a little in the upper part
but regards the lower with a good deal of respect
like the train of a black
wedding gown.
The hot air remains fluted.
The cold air remains fluted
wherever the sun draws the line.
The edging temperatures touch and touch down
like the beard of a tornado.
It is so hot see if popcorn will pop, see if water
will go to seed.
The shadow is the cloud without its substance.
Among trees an imminence to be a shade
in time,
a deepening with age
of overlapping leaves,
the only thought of the mower
among grasses and grains
in the straight thin family
of stringed instruments.
Nor is it any more unique with eclipse of the moon.
Men love the shade
and very late
will watch it clear itself a spot.
So long without object
like a girl’s face covering the streetlamp
the earth’s shadow
comes of age.
Searching shades,
waning a body till it dawns on the page,
Leonardo passed the night in such quarters.
But summers
we walk in the cold tans under the tree,
not that the sun can’t turn us
as dark,
but that a tree eats the sun,
saves us, is the monster of comfort.
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