Day 9

For today’s prompt, write a shady poem. I’ll leave the interpretation of this prompt up to you. It could be a poem that includes shadows and/or shading. It could be about a shady part of town or a shady person. Or well, something else.

Rue Aylmer

There was no shade in my dream, 
nor shadows, nor too much sun.

I lived again in Montreal.
I was in someone else's home by the St. Lawrence.
It was bright and lovely,
with high white walls,
and I redecorated it in my mind
and turned about, pleased, 
in a giant room for painting

I imagined filling it with life
as there was still time

and that is a great city 
why not live there?
and I walked out in it 
with a friend
and out of a street
behind me
a wave rose up made of street and shops for awhile
before liquifying and gaining height

and I saw my friend
her head poked out of the high curve of water
trying to breathe, okay, some forty feet above me
and I knew I'd have to dive into the wall of water
pushing towards me.

(they don't usually come from behind,
diagonally)

First I checked the low water near me for sharks.
It was perfectly clear. Just waterplants and a watersnake.
Indifferent to me.

There were no sharks in this dream.
There was no shade in this dream, nor too much sun.
And I was carried along
and the sidewalk leveled under my feet and dried
and I stood,
closer to some destination.

There is never shade in a dream, I think.
Nor sun.

But there are these cities.  Illuminated somehow and porous,
in time.
And someone living, for now, in the house I will return to
When I resume my younger life and choose for it
another direction.

I will stay in Montreal. 
And on Sundays go to the market.
I won't swim home.
I will just be home.
Painting in a light that casts no shadow.
And choosing yellow,
a lot of it.
And choosing tints.
Not shades.