May: Shadows

books read:

The Shades/ Betty Brock (kids’ book / a childhood favorite)
Casting Deep Shade/ C.D. Wright (poetry, lyric / bought years ago, looking for a chance to read it)

written May 3rd: How has it taken me this long to devote a month to shadows? Since the beginning of this log, I’ve written about shadows. First, my shadow — friend, foe, my dead mother. Then the shadows of trees and street lamps on the paved path. Then, for the past few months, the shadows of birds crossing my path. Where will shadows take me this month? I’m excited to find out!

Like January’s Windows and April’s Wind, May’s Shadows begin with a playlist, which was very fun to put together. I did it on Wednesday, with the help of shadow searches on Apple Music, my memories, Scott, and this Readers recommend post. That night, after dinner, Scott and I listened to it.

I’m Shadowing You

  1. I’m Shadowing You / Blossom Dearie
  2. Me and My Shadow / Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.
  3. Shadowboxer / Fiona Apple
  4. My Shadow / Keane
  5. Shadow Dancing / Andy Gibb
  6. Shadow Song / Screaming Trees
  7. Shadows and Light / Joni Mitchell
  8. Silve Shadow / Atlantic Starr
  9. Total Eclipse of the Heart / Bonnie Tyler
  10. Help Me Make It Through the Night / Kris Kristofferson
  11. Sunshine in the Shade / The Fixx
  12. the Shadow of Your Smile / Astrud Gilberto
  13. Evening / The Moody Blues
  14. White Room / Cream
  15. Shadow Stabbing / CAKE
  16. I’m Beginning to See the Light / Ella Fitzgerald
  17. Twilight Time / The Platters
  18. The Shadow Knows / Link Wray
  19. yesterday / The Beatles
  20. Moonshadow / Cat Stevens
  21. Golden Years / David Bowie
  22. Candle Mambo / Captain Beefheart
  23. If You go Away / Neil Diamond
  24. We Will Become Silhouettes / The Postal Service
  25. Crepuscule With Nellie / Thelonious Monk
  26. White Shadow/ Peter Gabriel
  27. Glamour Profession/ Steely Dan
  28. Hot Lunch Jam. Irene Cara
  29. Deorc Sceadu (Dark Shadow)/ The Dirty Dozen Brass Band
  30. We Three (My Echo, My Shadow, and Me)/ The Ink Spots
  31. The Gloaming/ Radiohead
  32. Deorc Sceadu (Dark Shadow)/ The Dirty Dozen Brass Band
  33. Hidden Shadows/ Room 34
  34. Dancing in the Moonlight/ King Harvest
  35. Watching the Wheels/ John Lennon

After listening through all of these songs as I ran, I decided to create a condensed playlist of my favorites. I’m calling it

Slappin’ Shadows

  1. I’m Shadowing You / Blossom Dearie
  2. Shadow Dancing/ Andy Gibb
  3. The Shadow of Your Smile/ Astrud Gilberto
  4. White Room/ Cream
  5. I’m Beginning to See the Light/ Ella Fitzgerald
  6. Moonshadow/ Cat Stevens
  7. Golden Years/ David Bowie
  8. Glamour Profession/ Steely Dan
  9. Hot Lunch Jam/ Irena Cara
  10. Dancing in the Moonlight/ King Harvest
  11. Evening/ Moody Blues
  12. If You Go Away/ Neil Diamond
  13. Watching the Wheels/ John Lennon

So, where to go next? The Readers recommend article offers some suggestions:

Shadow Meanings

from the article:

  1. like a bad conscience or a faithful dog, they follow us everywhere
  2. each is unique to the individual
  3. the brighter the light, the darker their hue
  4. like eyebrows, we take them for granted, but were they suddenly missing, the world would be very disturbing indeed
  5. are shadows always associated with darkness, negativity and mutability? Do they have to inspire fear?
  6. why a shadow of doubt?
  7. do people inevitably become a shadow of their former selves, or fall in someone else’s shadow?
  8. is the very substance of ambition merely the shadow of a dream?
  9. do we really have to walk in the valley of the shadow of death?
  10. without them everything would be a floating morass of light and colour — drop shadows bring a third dimension to the 2D world
  11. they constantly change shape, angle and intensity, like moods and emotions, which also gives them a strange beauty — shapes of leaves dance across a meadow, clouds caress the landscape
  12. they could be seen to cast another side of us, our subconscious, our underlying self, stretching out with a different perspective and shape across life’s daily glare

from my tagged log entries (tag: Shadows)

written May 12th: Tagging my shadows posts took some time. 23 pages of entries to read through. Now that they’re tagged, I’m rereading them to create a list of meaning for shadows.

  1. hulking shadow of the big orange buoy — is it actually the buoy with the color drained, or its shadow?
  2. my shadow = me, looking strong
  3. bird shadows
  4. the shadows of leaves, dancing in the breeze
  5. a friend
  6. an enemy
  7. my dead mom
  8. a ghost self (Joyce Carol Oates), trespassing, bearing witness in spaces where you’re not supposed to be
  9. a guide, showing me the way, pointing things out
  10. an anchor, heavy, dragging me down
  11. a heavy thought, worry, that won’t leave me alone, like this one from 30 april 2017 that taunts me: why not just stop and give up?
  12. a bad idea/ bad angel on my shoulder trying to get me to run faster and tire myself out
  13. as teacher and the implied I in my writing/running exercises, instructing the student (me) as the You — see 2 feb 2020
  14. fence post
  15. trestle
  16. street lamp
  17. sign
  18. a bee
  19. another runner, approaching from behind, running into the sun — their shadow alerts me to their presence
  20. bridge railing
  21. a different version of me — altered? another possible version of me?
  22. with a pony-tail that swishes
  23. of trees, darkening the river at the edges
  24. as evidence of something (more/unseen) there
  25. an obsession
  26. of clouds
  27. the groundhog’s on feb 2
  28. a pair, mine with Scott’s
  29. winter shadows: of my breath in the cold air, of snowflakes on the pool floor
  30. of the lane line — a long, dark, solid, thick line on the pool floor
  31. a double shadow = me + 2 shadow selves, a trick of the light on the track
  32. a faint form captured in a photograph, holding a camera
  33. illusion
  34. of the burst of small, new leaves on a tree: an explosion of fireworks
  35. the gentle touch of
  36. a trace
  37. a memory
  38. silhouettes behind shades
  39. trees casting shadows into the water like fisherman
  40. on the pool floor, faint and from the leaves on the trees through the windows, making the bottom of the pool look alive
  41. in front, leading me
  42. beside, joining me
  43. not next to, but inside of a shadow
  44. behind, slowing me down or looking tired or hiding or encouraging me from the back
  45. almost above, pushing me down, rooting me too firmly in the ground
  46. below, down in the gorge, near the river or deep in the ravine
  47. passing under tree shadows, sharing the experience with anyone else out there passing under them too
  48. out of the corner of my eye, not actually there or not quite there, but the hint of something there, almost
  49. in the frame, during a race watched online — someone holding a camera and following Sparta racers through the rough terrain
  50. Glittering shadows on the pavement: light through leaves moved by wind
  51. on the wall, the water, the path, the side of a building, the lawn
  52. under an object
  53. in the water, the gorge, the tunnel of trees
  54. above, from a bird, a bike on the bridge, a plane, a cloud
  55. lucky and free, able to go to places that I cannot: through closed doors, down the steep slopes of the gorge, leap from treetop to treetop
  56. not seeing it, but hearing it — what does a shadow sound like?
  57. embodying sorrow, sadness
  58. stretching
  59. dancing
  60. staining whatever it touches
  61. criss-crossing
  62. obedient, relentless
  63. reckless
  64. stalking
  65. sprawled
  66. draped
  67. flicker
  68. flutter
  69. flash
  70. frozen, fixed
  71. in perpetual motion — whirring, wheeling
  72. broken up by a rough surface
  73. eating, gobbling up the light
  74. obscures, darkens
  75. excited that Biden and Harris won
  76. casting
  77. throwing shade
  78. sharp
  79. solid, real — sturdy
  80. strong
  81. soft
  82. faint, wispy
  83. straight
  84. crooked
  85. long
  86. short
  87. muffled, muted
  88. sudden, accompanied by cool air, water
  89. small
  90. huge
  91. distorted
  92. never flat, empty
  93. deceiving
  94. illuminating
  95. menacing
  96. shade — wanted, welcomed
  97. my running shadow once scared another runner absorbed in conversation, as I neared her from behind — Oh! she exclaimed as she jumped
  98. sometimes my shadow abandons me when it’s too windy, or hot (and sometimes she likes the heat)
  99. shadows — flying birds, waving trees — moving across the glass on my desk — are these shadows or reflections? What’s the difference? The position of the light, Scott says (18 nov 2023)
  100. sometimes I greet her with a wave or hello friend!s
  101. what Plath’s mushrooms feast on: crumbs of shadow
  102. Schuyler’s gray depressions — craters causing dark shadows
  103. almost, not quite, only a hint
  104. dark shadows on a pale path
  105. of twisted trees on white snow
  106. sometimes almost black, mostly gray
  107. absent when gloomy
  108. creating necessary contrast
  109. not speckled shadows, but speckled light
  110. always in relation to the light
  111. shadow boxing — boxing with your shadow
  112. shadowboxing — isolating someone, putting them on display
  113. light sources: the sun, a lamp (on a table), a street lamp
  114. associated with death

Shadow Poems

added may 15: I read through all of these poems and picked up some favorite lines and descriptions or uses of shadows. I’d like to do something more with them, but I’m not sure what yet:

1

The whole world outside
wants to come into here,
to angle into
the simple shapes of rooms, to be broken and rebroken
against the sure co-ordinates
of walls
(Still Life with Shadow and Fish/ Jorie Graham)

Shadows and ghosts go through shut doors
(Doors/ Carl Sagan)

as if I’d been called late to wander,
to feel by way of edges and texture

around lintels and doors, hallways
of shadow now broken open with stairs
(Psalm with No Cure/ Julia B. Levine)

2

The breeze–the breath of God–is still–
And the mist upon the hill,
Shadowy–shadowy–yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token–
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries!
(Spirits of the Dead/ Edgar Allan Poe)

You can see beauty only from the side, hastily,
The dense grain on the field, many colours in a yellow stream.
The restless shadows in my head are drawn there.
They want to creep into the grain and turn to gold.
(Under Pressure/ Tomas/Tranströmer)

3

Down here this morning in my white kitchen
along the slim body
of the light,
the narrow body that would otherwise
stay forever the same thing
the beautiful interruptions, the things of this world, twigs
and power lines, eaves and ranking
branches burn
all over my walls.
(Still Life with Shadow and Fish/ Jorie Graham)

but the shadows carry the whole story
at first daybreak they open their long wings
(The Wings of Daylight/ WS Merwin)

4

a woman who was both light and every shadow the light pierces
(A Stranger/ Saeed Jones)

I don’t just miss the sun, I miss seeing my own shadow
(About this Poem: When I Tell My Husband I Miss the Sun, He Knows/ Paige Lewis)

A puddle, cobble-stones, jambs and doorstep
Are set steady in a block of brightness.
Till she strides in again beyond her shadows
And cancels everything behind her.
(Good Night/ Seamus Heaney)

5

shadow meaningless except to those who want for shade and find it there
(And All Visible Signs Swept Away)

She switched
places with her shadow because
suffering changes shape and happens
secretly.
(Obit/ Victoria Chang)

6

Have you found a seat in your room
For everyone of your wayward selves

To withdraw into their own thoughts
Or stare into space as if it were a mirror?

Do you have a match you can light
To make their shadows dance on the wall

Or float dream-like on the ceiling
the way leaves do on summer afternoons
(Late Night Inquiry/ Charles Simic)

Shadows the color of a mirror’s back
(Louisiana Line/ Betty Adcock

7

the seed of restlessness
that made you, finally,
swim toward the world,
kicking and shouting

but trailing a mossy darkness–
a dream that would never breathe air
and was hinged to your wildest joy
like a shadow.
(The Swimmer/ Mary Oliver)

you’d almost see the long silver ribbons of song the bird braids as if binding lit air to
earth that is all shadows, to keep us (as we walk our grounded passages down here)
alive to what is over our heads–song and silence–and the lot of us leaning up: mind-
defeated again, just harking to it
(Lark-luster/ Eamon Grennan)

8

Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn
indicative that suns go down,
The notice to the startled grass
That darkness is about to pass
(Emily Dickinson)

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.
The dark wheat listens.
Be still.
Now.
There they are, the moon’s young, trying
Their wings.
Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow
Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone
Wholly, into the air.
(Beginning/ James Wright)

9

When it comes, the Landscape listens —
Shadows — hold their breath —
(There’s a certain Slant of Light/ Emily Dickinson)

We diet on water, on crumbs of shadow
(Mushrooms/ Sylvia Plath)

10

We are watching them
as they swoop and gather–
the shadow of wings
falls over the heart
(The Birds/ Linda Pastan)

Inquire
of the skinny mosquito

on your wall
stinging its shadow
(Poem with No Speaker/ Franz Wright)

And one Canada goose so low in passing
above the barn you still hear the shadow
(December/ David Baker)

11

shadows
of tree limbs

like pages
of inked calligraphy
(After the Snow/ Linda Pastan)

the things I know:
how the living go on living
and how the dead go on living with them
So that in a forest
even a dead tree casts a shadow
(IV/ Laura Gilpin)

12

and the sun and its reflexion
throwing two shadows
what is the beauty of water
sky is its beauty
(Sea Poem/ Alice Oswald)

a white dog trailing a smaller one: ghost and noon shadow, two motes
disappearing into surf
(Vow/ Diana Khoi Nguyen)

13

Further north you can see from a summit the blue endless carpet of
pine forest
where the cloud shadows
are standing still.
no, are flying
(Open and Closed Spaces/ Tomas Tranströmer)

He’s like the shadow of a cloud,
Or Emily Dickinson read aloud.
(Chipmunk/ Ogden Nash)

to remember

  • the shadows of new leaves on a tree looking like fireworks (1 may)
  • shadowboxing (sparring with shadow), shadow boxes and shadow-boxing (putting someone on display, in a shadowbox) source to check out: Shadow Box — The Art of Assemblage (3 may)
  • menacing turkey as shadow-self (5 may)
  • allegory of the cave (6-7 may)
  • chiaroscuro (7 may)
  • Kara Walker and silhouettes (8 may)
  • silhouette theory (9 may)
  • creating an erasure poem based on the form of almost all shade with pin pricks of light (11 may)
  • image: street lamps (17 may)
  • The Shades and Casting Deep Shade (20 may)
  • throwing shade (22 may)
  • James Bond and silhouettes (28 may)
  • silhouettes and concrete poetry, including Diana Khoi Nguyen and this interview (30 may)

assessment

This was a great month of wandering and wondering and getting lots of inspiration for future projects. Creating a playlist is a great way to explore a theme more deeply, especially how it is understood in the popular imagination.

more shadow poems