I Looked for Life and Did a Shadow See

Some little splinter Of shadow purls And weals down The slewed stone Chapel steps, Slinks along The riverrock wall And disappears Into the light. Now ropy, riffled, Now owlish, sere, It smolders back To sight beneath A dwarfish, brindled tree That chimes and sifts And resurrects In something’s sweet And lethal breath. This little shadow Seems to know (How can it know? How can it not?) Just when to flinch Just where to loop and sag And skitter down, Just what to squirrel And what to squander till The light it lacks Bleeds it back And finds My sleeping dark-haired girl — O personal, Impersonal, Continual thrall — And hammocks blue In the hollows of her eyes.