Unification

An odd little town in the desert where the length of
your shadow has nothing to do with the height of the
sun, and so your shadow can be long when the sun
is overhead, or it can be short, or even non-existent
when the sun is low.  Puzzled, you ponder this outré
vision, this conundrum—do you consider yourself in
some alternate reality?  Is this the Twilight Zone?

Mere mortals have shadows all right, yet said shadows
conform to the laws of physics.  Here, though, in this
wee Arizona town, physics and natural laws are to
no avail.  Shadows are elongated as shadows go,
overly long like some one-dimensional morphed
rubber man stretching out ahead of you.  And
so you shake your fist at the sun, you look
to the cloudless sky, pent up, and plead
for an explanation, yet you get none. 
You turn to the town itself as you vie
on the edge of madness, on a cliff
of interrupted levelheadedness.

Is it the dryness that abides in arid surrounds?
Or is it the grizzled townsfolk eyeing from peepholes
in boarded up windows, or from vantage points high
in multistory buildings with missing shingles and
dangling gutters?  First you feel a kick within
due to that longish, “You,” projecting ahead 
over dusty streets, yet the novelty soon
wears thin like a balsa wood broom
gnawed by a hungry hound dog.

A setting sun affords no
consolation—wherein a shadow
would be, there is none; and so you
wax nostalgic for the “lost” you, that two-
dimensional soulmate who has lived with you
since day one.  Now you weep due to his absence. 
He is gone—all that remains is sun and sky and this
odd desert town with its hidden eyes and secretive faces
and its riddle of shadowy vicissitudes angering you no end.
The laws are at this town’s whims—you are more than
yourself, you are less than yourself.  Time and space
become as one.


40 Lines
Writer’s Cramp
9-1-16