Shadows sweep the boulevards; Winding their way around lampposts,

Climbing along trellises, slinking up shop walls.

A single shadow, attached to human feet must get lonely.

Feeling cold, hard stones, metal and concrete along its edges only.

Darkness is simply the only time shadows can get together and play. Oh, the dances they dance, such a glorious array.

We humans truly miss out on the nighttime display,

Of laughter and gaiety in the streets once past day.

A shadow does not merely disappear

When the sun refuses to shine for a time.

Does something not exist just because we cannot see it?

Does it fail to exist all due to lack of [sun]shine?

But this, dear reader, is the timing of true mystique.

These are the things we shall miss if we stop too long to blink.

Soulmates find each other in this darkness at daylight’s end.

Meeting up in full moonlight, as the shadow dances descend.

The timbre of stars is like nothing a human ear could ever recount,

For it only alights when shadows abound.

How else to explain the ignition of touch,

That occurs when two “strangers” meet after the dusk?

Oh, dappy mortal, who thinks this mere fate.

Did you not realize your shadow had already found your mate?

When humanity steps back, permitting the ethereal its part. Well, this is when true romance is aware in the heart.

So upon next moon’s cycle, when dusk begins its measured fade,

Take a tiptoe out into moonlight’s cascade.

Beware ne’re to disturb, this ethereal dance,

But instead, simply view its gossamer beauty as pure happenstance.

For where mortal and spectral gaze upon one another,

The spell hence is broken, the magic disentangled.

Thus rendering the chance at true love eternally strangled.

But for those mere observers who catch a fleeting glimpse of the phantasmic,

urely will know love’s quintessential magic.

Fading memories blow through my hollowed out soul,

wrapped in echoes of tormented silence and pain

riding hot desert winds, past the crumbling facade

of a dry empty ghost town where tumbleweeds reign.

Like emotional stretch marks carved into my heart,

inky shadows lie twisted, and deeply embossed

in striations and patterns that spell out your name,

filled with acid-rain tears, spilled for all that I’ve lost.

When I let myself ponder the cruelty of fate,

the unfairness twists inside my guts like a knife.

Since you left me behind without saying goodbye,

faded gray shades of loneliness color my life.

In my dreams you’re still here, warmly sharing my bed...

then I wake all alone, with your voice in my head.

©2018 - Dusty Grein

*** While not many sonnets are crafted in 12 syllable anapestic tetrameter, its melodic rhythm makes for a smooth flowing poem, which can still pack as much of a punch as the standard iambic pentameter offering.