Variations on a Theme
1. The Long Night
We envy the shadow its attributes, its willingness to subside,
but what of its flesh?
I lay in the field and wept.
Think of the fragrance, the moist leaves
enveloping the still
warm body. In retrospect, I realize that I should never have left, that air
returns to voided space despite all attempts to disavow
light, that wind and rain and soil alike filter through the chest’s
cavity, that stones may bear one’s touch in perpetuity.
At nineteen, death had gifted nothing to my world.
At twenty, little else remained.
So close, so lovely.
2. The Loneliness of Shadows
Light collapsing around a point. The two-headed flower.
In my dreams, no one speaks.
Not the thing itself, the bud bursting forth, petals ablaze with color,
but rather change: the process reinforced.
Sleep seldom shows such kindness.
Or its fruit, redolent of sun and rain, withdrawn and shriveled,
and finally, ingested.
Yesterday I woke damp but unafraid.
3. Alchemy
Stones never talk, but they rise from the earth, appearing as if by invitation.
The way silence lines an unfilled
grave, which is to say as below
so above, an infinite murmur open to the night.
And other notions: transpiration.
Waste.
Sublimation. Calcination and burning.
At times I have withdrawn
like water from the air’s
body, fearful yet reckless in the act.
That evening the moon flickered and the shadows lay at our feet,
and all the words we never framed,
the bitters our tongues could not know, the wasted
music and abandoned caresses, those words,
sighed into the ground, leaving you adrift, alone.
But how else might one transform darkness to light?
Or the reverse.
This originally appeared in Boston Poetry Magazine in April, 2014, and was first posted here in July of 2015.
O at the Edges 
I’m captivated by your stone lines … stones rise up as if by invitation … stones may bear one’s touch in perpetuity …
Reading this stirs an urge to hike onto some rocky terrain, find the stone calling me to stop in my tracks, reach down, touch … possibly carry along with me. I wonder at the synchronicity of what catches my attention … are there energies at work that guide my steps to the “right stone”?
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I have an affinity with certain stones. I don’t know what else to call it, and I don’t know why. But it exists.
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Loved this one, Bob.
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Thank you, Randy.
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Beautiful writing, thanks for sharing.
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Thanks very much!
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The motif of the variations here is complex.
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Or simple. Or a mixture of both.
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Or thereabouts. Whichever it’s masterfully rendered.
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I exist in that intersection. Sometimes it’s interesting.
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“Sometime”? I’d put nudge that to often/always pal.
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Ha. I suppose that annoying doesn’t’ preclude interesting.
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You have a very nice way of writing and it is certainly different, you have composed some lovely poems, but i would say when you post poems, post one per post so we can enjoy them more, as I certainly live to dive in mine, imagine the scenery before me and then reminisce after it too.
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Thank you. This is meant to be one poem, with three distinct parts, all carrying a common theme. But I failed to convey that…
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Try again if it helps, sometimes we bring about the best of our writings, when we fail to convey what we had in mind.
I found this post quite beautifully be honest.
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The shadows are always there, with or without the light. (K)
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Insidious shadows!
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So richly evocative, Bob. I will return to this one again and again.
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Thank you, Cate. You’ve made my day.
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