If poetry is the shadow

cast by our streetlight imaginations,
then I am not the silhouette made

by bluebird or song sparrow. I am not
the trace of a wing dusted with snow,
nor the spruce and the yew outlined

at the edge of a meadow.
What shadows speak through me,
shimmer with the heat of asphalt.

What shadows parse from the light
bear stench of sewers, salt-spray,
the perfume of jasmine flowers.

Dull pewter, the blades and makeshift
implements pass across the terrible
whetstone: and come out singing.

– with a line from Lawrence Ferlinghetti

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.