Light Shadows

The dark ones get the goth attention,
But lighter shadows predominate.
Interference patterns in the light,

Do shades make poor metaphors when pale?
Think of them as being cast by words,
Phrases, shadows of significance.

They interfere with meaning’s pathways,
Shape the way clarification falls.
Without languages to throw shadows,

It would be all blinding life then night.
Ask any other brainy creature.
They can’t cast the shadows to reply.

Some phrases are thin and twiggier
Than aspens in winter. Their shadows
Are pale as pencil sketches in snow.

When people go on about twilight,
They mean they want meaning close to night—
Obscurity, clarification—

You get the visuals. Nearly pitch
And then the big reveal, the angel
Appearing to the humble prophet,

The alien illuminating
The hidden nature of the dark wood.
You can’t get that with paler shadows,

Phrases that shift the light a little
Bit less here, lesser there, plenty there,
The quenched disorder of adjacent

Possibles, as the complexity
Theorists’ jargon has it. Thin shadows
Can’t concentrate either light or dark,

And they feel weightless in consequence.
A coyote, however, quibbles
In that querulous coyote way,

Complete with high-pitched warble and yelp
From somewhere in the aspens, a lean
Sliver of less light in the daylight.