Shadows on Cave

I lean back in chair

Have realized, body

Now frail, I’m only

67-years less hair on skull,

What remains of thought,

Simple jottings of simple man

Lingering outside Plato’s

Cave, then back to retrieve

Sun glasses, I then wander

Through gray smoke, tree

Lined river bank, where

Is my camera? In my hand

Simple tablet, wondering

Light box on digits

Sun bleeding light down

Among plague coming

Shining artifact what leaves

Earth, beaches, forest, mountain

Civilized are those of us wonder

Leading our children by hand,

Much in our generations left

Behind when we wonder ethnic

To the bone; Rambled out

Of cave, to forest, children

Aware, she’s thirty

This year she’s thirty

What will she deal with, smoke

Will never part, I sit

Quietly, all my time

With her mother since 9-11

Day of my birth I was so young,

Twenty-seven, Together on January 7,

1980 we stepped

Into light, arriving where, no

Beatings she’s 64, I’m 67, Oh God

In front of our door on porch her flowers.

How did we travel from Iowa.

Yes, To Nebraska, Yes To Colorado

To Illinois, To rest in South Dakota

USA, What happened as in 1993

Stunned out of full-time teaching

Failing tenure, gave way

Over many, 26 years, 11 years

Wandering USA plains in light

Truth finding scrawled images.

Nowhere lost, color negatives,

No evidence of Kodak

In Walmart, in Eastman,

More in electronic when Nikon

We lived in South Dakota. Nikon

Made no more film cameras, all

Dried up, no darkrooms, computers

Became laboratory, Where is acid

Bath, Hydrous, what water soak

Rivers of silver, silver dumped

Into town in North Dakota.

Why did we come to South Dakota

We only know, it was a good

Place to avoid daily murder, drug

Bust, would never be the same

Again, throwing shadows back

Into the cave, no longer helpless,

We leave a little behind our shadows.

Published by elgwyn

I was a University and community college instructor before retiring. I also worked in fast food restaurants, and retail stores. I am an ordinary man writing for because I want to write and because my education prepared me to write; BA English lit, MA English, EdS higher education, and MFA creative writing, free verse poetry and essays. Blogs are an answer to high-priced self-publishing. Walt Whitman had to self-publish his first 1000 copies of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass because in 1855 poetry did not sell. Most poets make a living in other ways than writing. Wallace Stevens was an insurance executive, and TS Eliot was a banker. Many writers teach, and always there have been writers who have written because they needed to express their thoughts and feelings. They wrote not necessarily to make money but to express "the old universal truths of the human heart" according to Faulkner. Here I reach a wider audience I missed than by self-publishing, and I stand a better chance to reach a wider audience for less expense than self-publishing. I self-published my first books, Winter from Spring, and Meditations on Gratitude; poetry and photo books which were easier to self-publish than to seek a not to seek a publisher company. This blog allows me to write for an interested audience because I write poetry and personal essays. I write for a friendly audience and present to you a slice of my writing. Perhaps you will enjoy what you read. View more posts

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