Shadow Games

The afternoons pass,
playing guessing games
with shadows on the far wall.

See that one,
like an inkblot,
escaped from the pen
of a gutless poet;
still pursued by bloodied droplets
of unconsummated words.

Or maybe it is a folded map,
a country stretched out on its side,
its eyes closed,
its people teetering
on the edge;
their voices hoarse;
their passions coarse;
their poems, their songs,
slipping into the sideward sky.

And those rings of
quivering ripples,
as the sea sloshes around
in the perplexed clouds;
bubbles of blackened
ocean spray,
rising in a mist,
hiding the wordless truth,
hiding the poet,
chasing the sleeping inkblot.

The afternoons pass
making sense of life,
playing out on the far wall.