Shadow Poem

I came one night
to tell you the tale
of the nightingale,
who sang of your tendency
to forget your own name 
and from where you came.

She sang so you could remember—
your name and your home.

And as you return 
to your mirrored nest,
I will look out for you—
you who loses reason and sight 
at the slightest
glimpse of light.

The crickets told me 
to wait for them at night,
when the moon has not yet risen.

And that they will tell me their secrets—
of capture and release,
the chain of letting go of things.
and how sounds are made.

And I will tell them 
of how my fingers can spell worlds,
and how human beings have hearts 
that can beat outside of them.

We will trade secrets,
like two children 
in a tent with a dying flashlight.

And we will feel whole again—
because we won’t have to pretend anymore
that we don’t exist.

Better to start in the dark
using your fingers as irises
and your toes as cones.

Better to see the dark first,
with lightness bleeding through.

The light will infiltrate, 
but only if you focus on the dark.
Seeing it for what it is.
A curtain.

A curtain covering 
your shame and malice, 
pettiness, greed, longing unfulfilled,
the delicate holes in God 
that culture imagined—
your baby selves.

That shadow is a cover 
shaped by the mess 
you don’t want to see in you.

Darkness is never the thing it covers.
What it covers is a baby—
wild and toothless
flailing,
feeling—
too much
becoming danger
when unseen.

Darkness is not a thing but a space.
And your acorn calls for that shadow place.

The remembering of your forgetting—
that
is the beginning of destiny.

And your darkness is 
where souldreams are reborn.
And now you rise—
fists on,
as the lady in the ring,
remembering your own name,
singing from a deep throated stone
with a voice made of home.