Shadows on the Water

Susan Kim

I

Out of what hell or death has it come to appear

at the edge of the pond at the moment when

I look down and see through the summer briars

The shadow there? Out of what horror has it come

To plague my everyday with its weightless

silence, the silence that tears a hole in normalcy,

the doubt that washes over the backyard chores –

raking and mulching, weeding and watering –

controlling the dandelion seeds that blow skyward

and make me drop the pail and wish I could follow,

escape with my voice and my sanity intact,

drift, toward the shadow itself, beginning?

II

Why wouldn't I – against the brightness of kids,

cardinals, sunshine – be drawn to the shadows

atop the driveway's puddles, the reflections

of dark, moving leaves, of people I could know

years from now? The shadows hold for me the songs

of future adventures, the unsaid conversations

that make up the unscripted  part of my life,

the knotted tomorrows, the bends in the road

that will show themselves after a little darkness.

III

My shadow stretches ridiculously long and bendy,

off the dock and into the water, my knees at rest

then tousled by the wake of a tricked-up speedboat

full of fishermen who nod their hellos and leave me,

again, with my own 15-foot self, the weightless woman

that lies airily over the water and, somehow, stays on top.

The sun is rising and my shadow is shortening

just as I've gotten used to its awkward proportions,

just as I'm on the brink of translating its first words

which the whole time have been my words, the ones

I was afraid to say – or, no, didn't know I wanted to say --

didn't know I'd be surprised into deeper water-dances

that etched me as a person I couldn't fathom

the shadow of myself, the shadow on the water

that stretches and shortens into a song.