Stalking the Shadows: There's a shadow on my shoulder (poem)

[shadowknows69]

A cold wind has blown straight through my very soul
Since the days when I was very young
There’s a shadow on my shoulder
And I don’t know where it comes from

On an ice skate’s edge I coast between the dark and the light
Constant struggles to fight the lures
Of the mystery, the pull, the calling
And venomous desires of the night.

I’ve communed with the demons
Even known an angel or two
All had broken wings.
No chance to fly
Just waiting around
For judgment bells to ring
Passing time like us all
‘Til it’s our time to die

She comes for us all
Cold and fair Mistress Death
What is it that shaped my soul and who cares?
Will I be counted as sinner or saint
When I draw my final breath?

Am I all alone?
Is it wrong that I feel at home
In shade or sun?
That I live with both worlds in my heart?
And yet don’t feel connected to either one?

An alien in my own mind; are you out there too?
Is there a shadow on your shoulder prodding you what to do?
Like a spark of dark that shocks the very spirit
Thoughts that can’t be my own
Memories of a person I could never be.
Or visions of future horrors that shouldn’t be known

What conjured wraith have I carried these years?
At times I’ve been a monster but has the man prevailed?
I’ve longed to be an agent of the light
But are past sins truly erased?
The shadows whisper invading mind and blurring sight.
Threatening to put the darkness back on my trail.

Constant and relentless is the chase
The shadow draws closer
My soul put up as gambling chips
In some obscene metaphysical race
I quicken my step but a thin thread binds me
And drags my feet; stumbling my stride
Ankles tangled in black twine fighting to break free.

Will I ever be rid of you my dark friend?
Are you a necessary part of me or a parasite?
An infection of my essence or simply that old lizard in us all?
Fighting evolution, sensing its impending end.
Will my better angels brush you from my shoulder at last
Or will you dig in and hold fast?
And keep haunting my future and my past?

Almost forty years now and I still skate on shattering ice
No answers yet, but I pray someday to have some
There’s a shadow on my shoulder
And I don’t know where it comes from.
-S

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. That is stunning!

Thank you...

K&R

:hug:

[nolabear]

2. You ask

the questions we've all asked in one form or another (and to one degree or another) since we knew we were people. Are we good, bad, both? And what waits for us? Is it a blessing or a curse or is it just what is? That's one of the things poetry was invented to ask. Alas, none has ever been invented that really answers.

Well done.

[CTyankee]

3. Here is what your poem made me think of

Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn
Indicative that suns go down;
The notice to the startled grass
That darkness is about to pass.

[shadowknows69]

4. I like that, Is that yours or your "author's" or other?

[CTyankee]

6. Oh, bless you to even think I could write that! It's Emily Dickinson.

I wrote a whole section of my master's thesis on just this one poem, which rather than finding it scary (as most people feel it is)I argued that it is actually hopeful. What she says, IMHO, is exquisite paradox. While "suns go down" suggests days that are no more and light going out of one's world, she does not say that suns are extinguished, and of course they will, inexorably, go up again. The "notice" of the foreboding shadow does startle us, but this notice is about a darkness that will "pass." I take solace from what I believe is the voice of the resolute Emily Dickinson.

Emily certainly has her share of dark poems, but then here comes the absolutely lovely take she has on simple sunrise and sunset:

I'll tell you how the sun rose,
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.
The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
"That must have been the sun!"

But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile
Which little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while

Till when they reached the other side,
A dominie in gray
Put gently up the evening bars,
And led the flock away.

Emily is a difficult poet, but I love deconstructing her poems (she wrote some 1770 of them). I often send some of her poems about the death of a loved one or about remembrance of one who is now gone to people who are grieving or observing the anniversary of a death. They are always appreciated...

[JDPriestly]

5. Tried to recommend.