Shadow Dance

by Michael John Gallen

The wind was lost in stone conceit
When Pan escaped these city streets

To fly the slumberfall of words

To worlds beyond the chimes of

Time’s insistence-

Far from discourse-drum of

Sentence, starved and

going numb.

The whores, their lullabies in dust

Began the scarlet songs of lust…

At dusk, the cobbles shivered

As the soft sigh of the river-god

Played carriage,

Rattled inward breath-

A hope to make the boy

Forget.



All there ever was

Was a source

And he

Its flitting orbital moth,

Real in the reeling

Concealing his myth in

A sphere’s golden kiss.

Young,

Wistful,

Wilful waters

Washed the mortar from his feet.

Surely this was life complete?

-To sleep upon a cradling green

To dream

And in the dreaming’s spell, be

Tideless

Timeless

A creaseless hidden lake…

…to wake, and

tell the tale of day

In silence,

Praying love reborn;

A halo

From the womb of morn.



So it was

And might always have been

Untouched

Unheard

Unknown

Unseen

Alone among the leaves, transcending

Thought and need

Of having friend.



But in the end came

Days of thunder

The gods enveiled their golden wonder, and

In the shrouding cloud entraced the lines of

Pan’s forgotten face-

A man- for though to heaven near

His fear gave him away.

Even now, in the closed heart of grey

He knows the sunset

Having seen no sun.


But knowing alone is not light.


So in the night’s

Silken glove, when

There’s nothing above,

He digs.

Peeling the earth

For her glow…

…but below,

At the core,

There were only the conversations,

The brief glances,

Common woes and shared elations.

The weighted silence- its violent

Tremors stilled

By a willing smile’s patience.

Senseless

That in searching

He missed his own radiance.



For even in darkness we are blind

Blind dancers

Winding and

Weaving

Through each other’s arms.

With no direction, but to the next touch.

With no flame

Save our faith in its coming.