I met my
Shadow
When the sun was at its apex,
Where the sands of desert gave way to rock.

For once, I stood my ground,
Took wounds.

Then, we sat around a pit of sand,
Cracking our teeth on grit,
Sharing stories.

When night came,
I pushed him into the campfire.
“I’m not very good at reconciliation,”
I explained.
He squirmed like a dark butterfly
Pinned by fire.

Wolves in the sky are chasing
Sun and moon.
Winter is cold and cruel;
There is a great deal
Of fear and foreboding
In our stories.
In our lives
Light is dimmer,
Hell is nearer,
Brother slays brother in dark places.
The dark places are growing.

In a once great city I watched a man
Be eaten by shadows.

When fire and hail have scoured the earth,
And the riders of Muspelheim have trod bones and blood,
When the sun and the moon are gone,
And humankind has given out its last collective wail,
Will you be there,
Waiting for me beneath the branches of Yggdrasil?
Will you be there?

Three men hung the corpse of a shark
In a tree for its enlightenment.
They hefted rifles,
Pierced its side with bullets.

“We’ve taken him a long way from the sea,” they said.

The dead shark swam in the tree,
Its rancid blood raining down like manna,
Its eyes bulging, thick with burgeoning wisdom.

It lay in that tree for nine days and nine nights,
Soaking up knowledge in its mute way.
By the end of the ninth night,
It had supped fully on enlightenment.
A moth appeared before the shark
And landed on its shiny nose.
This tipped something already on the brink,
Freeing the shark from its ****** form in a sag, a slow burst,
And a mass of vermin churned forth.