A Short History of the Shadow

“How many times can summer turn to fall in one life?”
― Charles Wright

“It may not be written in any book, but it is written—
You can’t go back,
you can’t repeat the unrepeatable.”
― Charles Wright, Littlefoot: A Poem

“Each word, as someone once wrote, contains the universe.
The visible carries all the invisible on its back.
Tonight, in the unconditional, what moves in the long-limbed grasses,
what touches me
As though I didn’t exist?
What is it that keeps on moving,
a tiny pillar of smoke
Erect on its hind legs,
loose in the hollow grasses?
A word I don’t know yet, a little word, containing infinity,
Noiseless and unrepentant, in sift through the dry grass.”
― Charles Wright, A Short History of the Shadow: Poems