Shadows, Light And Clouds Poem by Patti Masterman

We play hide and seek worst of all
From ourselves: see the ancient summers
Intaglio of shadow and light, cloud and rain
Even if every droning locust were replaced
By a cry of here once was I; there I was going by
I can't catch up anymore-

The game has gone on too long
The seasons are folding in on each other
I see myself climbing over rocks, chasing rainbows
Looking up to catch a glimpse, behind the clouds
Disappearing sun of childhood, and now middle age comes;
Hurrying around a bend, ahead lies the river of slow forgetting
It's liquid silver light flowing moonlit shadows
It will carry me for miles before I come back to myself again-

Coming back to something I never really knew
Turn your head one degree and it's different
The angle lets light in from a thousand possible directions
Careful or you won't recognize anyone again
You could be lost for eons, shadowed by dissolution
We play hide and seek in our original self containment:
The game life invented for us-

Until the world hides us forever again under it's clouded wing
And we dissolve back in solution
Like fine shadowed sediment suspended in a little sea
A forever sea that courses along singing
With a musical little voice, of all that's left of us
We are life's living memory of itself, always in the forgetting
That it's a game and we're just the indulgence
Of a sometimes summer world that likes playing
With shadows, light and clouds.