The Nobodies Poem by Sheena Blackhall

One summer evening, walking along the river
I imagined the children
Other men could have given me.

What would they have looked like
These nobodies,
These airy non-contenders?

Like runners awaiting the starter
In a race that never began

I imagined them as a moth imagines light
Each pale half-face no cell had ever filled

In the woods, in the dark spaces
I glimpse them from the corner of my eye
My lost darlings, my coveted ones

I never brought their fathers to the sticking point
Those shadowy Euridices,

Sometimes from the walls of night
I hear the seductive echoes of their voices.