See that dangling chain of light
Beneath the moon, swinging free
With the dancing of endless age;
There is that, and there is space,
Together, waiting in a corner
Behind an early dawn’s shadow.
Just as a good rhyme will shadow
The meaning of both words, light
Can grow in the obscurest corner,
But not quite sourceless or free.
What is not the filling of space
With one’s own sense of the age,
One’s certainty of what this age
Will attempt to evict the shadow
That is the prior tenant of space?
We would be the effort of light,
Expending all of our selves to free
Us from the two walls of a corner.
A corner’s opposite is a corner.
We turn one ever day. We age.
We learn to dance, to feel free,
And ignore the spasms of our shadow
As we spin, spin toward the light.
We even lose our fear of space.
They say the oldest place in space
Is the farthest away, that corner
Opposite our own; but if its light
Is the oldest in the sky, then age
Is to time a meaningless shadow,
Or light of time is totally free.
Our young sun’s light is free
To slowly fill up most of space
Over time. A planet cuts a shadow
Into its rays, like a hall corner
Cuts lamp-glow. What distant age
Will see a diminution of its light?
The light of stars is somehow free
Of age, while we’re captive in a corner,
Chained by shadow, dangling in space.