The New World

I was so used to the nausea, the anguish,
the stomach pains, your stumbling,
arm aided walk, the toilet dashes, the slow
sleepless nights, your arms shuddering,
pinpricked like a junkie's

that when the preoccupied secretary
hurried to us, split open the thin lipped
envelope, and briskly explicated
the intricate scientific phrases as “all clear”,

I just wept, and couldn’t accept it,
and I wondered, as the two words sank in,
who or why or how or what
had catapulted our lives away
and just as blithely decided
to fling them back. So that now
everything could seem the same as it was

except that the waiting room, the chairs,
the sky outside, our hands, your
turbaned wisps of withered hair,

were all new, entirely.

Your Shadow

Now you share your every action
with your insistent twin;
with a fraction of your effort
it tracks your whims and our griefs
though it is my shadow
only vicariously.
Whatever you do
it is unerringly you
but less than you;
so it and I have developed
a humbling relation
about what it will do
and it will do and it will do.

Your shadow
is your uncanny dancing partner,
wherever you lead it follows.
Whatever the time of day,
no matter that clouds sway
across the entire sky,
it concertinas the stairs,
slants over your chair:
its grimness is a kind of solace
that it and only it
requires all our attention.

Your shadow
being cast from inside you
lies beside you
even in the night;
sometimes it seems to glow
with a special darkness;
sometimes it is so strong
that I seem to cast it too.
Persistent as a god,
its natural state
is nothingness.

Your shadow
will concentrate our minds
until it stretches
in protracted stealth
and becomes more you
than you yourself.