                            Long Shadows


Long shadows on a warm afternoon.  

The slanting rays are a bridge to other days,
 other seasons, other lives.  

My head lies clear across the courtyard.  
Others hurry through my shade, oblivious.  
Long warm shadows do not concern them now.  
They will not walk the sun-ray bridge today.  

My bridge leads back to a magic childhood moment:
Friends running across a green lawn, 
Amazed by the shadows stretching before us.  
Innocent of geometry and angles and other book-learning, 
We had never known our shadows could grow like that.  
I do not recall how that magic afternoon ended:  
Dinner?  A fairy story lovingly read to me?  Bedtime?  
The bridge to warm afternoons
 does not extend into the dark of night.  

Long shadows on a warm afternoon.  

The slanting rays of a long-ago Christmas Eve,
 not warm, but still magic.  
I see the fading sunlight on a wall 
Glowing with anticipation 
 of the delights to come with the dawn.  
I can hardly wait for bedtime.  

Long shadows on a warm afternoon.  

At last the ray-bridge brings me back to the here and now.  

As I walk homeward I catch a last glimpse of the sun 
 touching the horizon.  
Shadows have faded, 
But I can still imagine mine, 
Stretching now to the edge of the world.  

Long shadows on a warm afternoon.  


                                       -- Thomas G. Digby 
                                       First Draft  19:50 04/22/2002
                                       Edited       20:33 05/05/2002
                                       Edited       13:34 05/11/2002
                                       Edited       15:39 06/19/2002
