"One of those poems was a little whimsical."

Really? Just the one?

Photo by Ioana Cristiana on Unsplash

The title observation was made a few weeks ago by one of my beloved friends-and-relations, someone who reads this Substack faithfully and has moreover been putting up for years with my sideways, unadult way of approaching the world. I’m not sure I’ve ever quite convinced her that Whimsical, in my poems and in my worldview, is a feature and not a bug. Here we go again, M. Wait till you read this nonsense.

[Note: The nonsense in question can be heard on audio by using the little widget above the photograph, labeled “Listen to Post” or “Article Voiceover.” I have experimented with this over the last couple of posts and you said you like it, so it’ll be a regular amenity here for whimsical poems and others.]

---

On a Walk at Night


From the darkened pane
of a second-floor window, the face
of a gibbous moon peers down at me,

would-be tenant touring a flat for rent,
celebrity burglar with mask torn away – 
not at any rate a fixture in this house, 
this slender constellation of brick and plaster and siding;

not someone who, if I ran up the shadowed stoop
and rang the bell, would swing the door wide 
and bid me welcome, but one instead who would flicker
on tiptoe from front room back to the kitchen, and wait
for the bell to hush, for my footsteps to whisper 

down and away; someone who, while waiting,
might fill the kettle and rummage for a teacup,
never needing to switch on a light.

---

“Keep Your Shadow Clean”


is not what the ad insisted I should do, it had
another scrubbing job in mind, but “shadow”
was the word I read, and paused, and looked around
to ask: So, how are things? Do you need cleaning?

So-so, my shadow answered. Really clean, I’d be
a deeper dark, less fuzzed around the edges.
Remember that stone wall you saw, those years ago?
You thought it had a mural painted on, until a breath
of wind sent the young vines of ivy into quiver, 
and behind each one the crispest, blackest shadow 
curled and coiled and trembling, alive as any
greenest leaf or stem. Now, that’s what I call clean.

What cleans a shadow, then? I asked.

						                       Light, 
she replied, of course.

			                 Light, I repeated. And today
we’re neither of us at our brightest, are we. Sorry for that.

I change, my shadow said. So does the light,
and so do you. It’s how things are. Just know
that clean or not, unseen or seen, I’m here. Wherever
there is you, there’s me. And when the Great Light comes
to clean us both, guess what? I’ll still be here
right next to you. Tied at the heel, you might say.

Okay, I answered, but will your legs still be 
a mile longer than mine?

			                        Let’s hope, my shadow
answered, and I almost heard her laughing. Even so, 
I’ll only ever run as fast as you do.

---

In one of my early posts I wrote about the part of myself that doesn’t grow up, and what a crucial role that kid-self plays in my poetry. For one thing she’s the custodian of my earliest sense-memories, so any depth of feeling that my poems manage to communicate is rooted in her experience. Also, though, she’s curious and open-eyed enough to see what she sees even when other people see something different. It’s when she starts building narratives around some of her, um, unique perceptions that we end up in Whimsical territory. What’s the moon doing inside that house when it doesn’t live on this block? What if we run up and ring the doorbell, what will the moon do then? “Keep your shadow clean” — how am I supposed to do that? Oh, I’ll ask my shadow. Don’t bother her with explanations about light reflected off windowpanes, or tell her patiently to read the ad headline one more time. She knows all that stuff; she’s just busy with something else at the moment. Me, I’ve learned not to interrupt her. I just take notes.

For the record: the word that wasn’t really “shadow” was “shower.” Go ahead, write an interesting poem about keeping your shower clean. I’ll wait.