Sometimes lying in my bed I close my eyes and imagine myself back there again
Back in my old childhood room, in my old childhood bed
I can see the green nightlight shining on the wall
See the dark outlines of the wardrobe and the dressing table
The moonlight coming in through the window
From the street below I hear a lone car passing
You can hear it coming, then arriving, then gradually fading away into the distance
Then the silence returns
I lie there in the quiet
Then suddenly…suddenly I find myself…I find myself rising
Like out of my body, rising up toward the ceiling
I can look back down and see my physical body still lying there on the bed
Then I turn and I fly right out the window
Suddenly I’m outside and I’m free
It’s dark now, a world devoid of colours, a world transformed, a World of shadows
With the big moon shining over the bay
The flowers in the front, their petals closed…drooping
Their all sleeping now, grown colourless in the pale moonlight
I fly over the shrubs and the flowers, fly over the wall and the front gate
The coast road it is so quiet now, not a sound of a car
Or sight of any soul out walking
It’s late…
So ghostly in the quiet, the outline of the other houses along the street
Just like faces sleeping
I fly over the road and over the sea wall, down the steps to the beach
All the sand and the little shells and stones
And the big rocks just standing there so still and so quiet
Almost like their watching me or waiting on me
As if…as if questioning
I look over at the big mountains of the headland in the far distance sloping down toward the sea
Their great big dark outlines dotted with little lights from all the isolated farms and villages
And there at the very end, the lighthouse, it’s red light winking back at me at intervals
All under a beautiful star laden sky
It’s wonderful, magical looking !  It reminds me of Christmas…the lights at Christmastime.

I fly over the big rocks and the rock pools
Wow! Look now, the sea!  The tide!! The tide is coming in
Like a huge…great army moving stealthily under cover of darkness
Stretching the whole way as far as you can see
Inching its way along, the water filling the little grooves in the sand
Wow!  Just looking at it, watching it, it’s awesome! It’s mesmerising!!
Soon it’ll be joining the rock pools
It’ll be like an army pouring into a city
The water level will rise slowly
And all the sea creatures will start to come out, the *****, the eels and the fish
It’ll all come alive.

So I fly over the silent standing rocks and the strand and the tide that’s coming in heading up toward the village
I pass an open stretch of beach with hardly any rocks
This is where the young families would come
The mothers with their little children to swim and play
But it’s so quiet now…so quiet and desolate…lonely looking
Now the children have all gone
Now there’s only the memory…the echo
Yea! Now there’s only the sound of the ghost children playing, splashing about
Their excited voices still ringing in the air…somewhere
Once as a child I walked these same beaches
I knew every rock
But strangely I can hardly remember myself now
That child I once was
I feel somehow that he left me…left me a long time ago
Old friend we knew each other once, why has your memory faded away from me
Have I changed so much
Do you not know me now or trust me
Am I too scary for you to look at or talk to
Have I sided too much with this world, a world that once used scare and pain you so
You and I, we have wandered far from our old toys
Were forced to play more different grown up games
Had to adopt many guises, wear many different masks
All those things I had to do and those different people I had to become
Just to survive here
Yea! This world it blew us onto many a strange shore,
And now, returning…like an old man from the sea
Weathered and half broken, still with little of any worth to show
Tell me…tell me you haven’t left me…left us
That you haven't abandoned us
Take us with you, we’d rather go with you than stay in this…this empty place
With you there was always wonder, there was always magic…every day
It was always more fun when you were around
…we miss you, where did you go Old Friend ?

I fly on, there’s the old swimming pool
All quiet now, hushed, silent, not a sound
So ghostly, no laughter, no splashing about, no shouts of delight
The night how it offers a contrast to the day
This ghostly world of stillness and of quiet
Of shadows and memories and lost things
And I like a ghost just wandering here
The daylight world remembered from afar as the dead might remember the living.

I fly on over the swimming pool
Now I see the village itself, the street lights and the lights from the pubs still open
A few people out walking along the seafront
Husbands and wives perhaps…young lovers
Y’know I can remember this beach thronged with sunbathers in the summertime
All the colour and the noises
I can…I can remember the wild days, the stormy seas lashing the shore
Remember the high winds buffeting the house at night
I can remember the high tides when the sea would come right up to the steps
Would swamp all the big rocks
All you could see was this huge massive blanket of just blue sea everywhere
And in the Winter time I can remember the snow on the rocks
The snow over everything, so white and clean and fresh, all fresh in the frosty air
And I remember the tranquil Summer evenings, the waves gently lapping up against the shore
Lulling you off to some sweet dream...or dreams faraway.

When I was young I didn’t know what this world was and why I was here
And now, I still don’t know, I’m none the wiser
But wherever I go, I know there’ll always be the sea…
It’s a part of me…these memories, these things I’ve seen
Wherever I find myself, in the heart of a grey city or out in the green countryside
There’ll always be that…that seaside village
Yea! There’ll always be the sea.
I grew up in a seaside village…a seaside village
One time long ago.

Bound
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 14-15

Now it is winter—the coldest night.
And as the light of the streetlamp casts strange shadows to the ground,
I have lost what I once found
in your arms.

Now it is winter—the coldest night.
And as the light of distant Venus fails to penetrate dark panes,
I have remade all my chains
and am bound.

Published as “Why Did I Go?” in my high school journal the Lantern in 1976. I have made slight changes here and there, but the poem is essentially the same as what I wrote in my early teens.

Step into summer's last light hew
Where the dreams of decades lived run true.
Shadowed fingers grip us there
To press deep the moments we once shared.
Twilight's chill preserves our past
It's unfathomable magic forever lasts.
Be lost within that mystic hold
Where our long loved secrets are never told.

Tom Lefort, June 2024

Everyone sits still,

yet there are shadows walking --


around on the walls.

"I have a hundred photos lined up to be posted.
I edit them, I think about them, and I let them be.
I let them be in my gallery for the right time.

And the right time never comes.

Days become months, and months at times turn into years.
But the right time never comes.

I don't know why!

But it is alright!

It is alright because I am not in a race, nor am I in a hurry to tell my story.
I don't mind waiting at the stop like this bus.
I don't mind being forgotten about
Or just not talked about for days.

But I, in my own way, after making those stops, I will carve my road ahead.
Uncover the true beauty of my story
In the most unusual way.
Just like how sunlight lights up a simple road and makes patterns with the help of shadows.

Shadows have their own ways.
Shadows glorify those pretty rays.

Is healing good for me?
but I'm intricately attached to these scabs and scars
I hold them so dearly, I don't want to let them go.
Is healing my current foe?
but these roots are dead. What will grow instead?
Uncertainty is a fright to me
And maybe the light is too harsh
Cause I love my shadows, from the tip of their nose down to their toes
They've been my constant comfort
Healing light is too blinding
and my vulnerabilities are intricacies only I and my shadows are minding

I can never do the one thing I want the most to do,
I can only - suddenly: fear,
Encroaching shadows.
Blindsided, I wish I could say. But no.
Not quite.
Doubt shrouds my intentions,
Like a cloud blocking out - no, an eclipse,
Predetermined intervals of near complete darkness,
A pattern of uncertainty, a seeming dichotomy-
But reliable nonetheless...
All the same.
Ordered chaos; predictable, unwelcome, regrettable.
Torturous, truly.
Light again, passing by, gone again-
Always.
Never.
I can never do the one thing I want the most to do.
I can only do the one thing I am wont the most to do.
And I am helpless to it all.
Lost to it all.
It is a cruel discrepancy.

~
Are we all the same distance apart?
Are we nocturnal
because we buy into
rhythmic disturbance,
trying to find a memory
in a dark room?

In shadow of advancing myth,
there's evidence of hunters
in the glowlight,
with wings outstretched,
solitary and contrite,
we cut the night,
we cut the night.

From sticks to bitterness,
we cut the night,
we cut the night.
~

It happens with all the holes and wounds: they grow their own face, mend their gaps, heal their rifts — those new skills of yours are but entities that emerge: to grant shelter, to stand guard, replace the old, thicken the crust, weather this human storm — through and through.

But will the skin ever return to its soil? It linger on forevermore. How tight its grip? How hardened its sappy brooks? When will it nourish those delicate roots anew?

These thoughts arise as doubt breaks free. It pours and flows as I gaze down and lower still. Shadows seep and leak as the wheel spins and drills the soul evermore hollow. Anonymous is our tree of life, but it keeps faces in store.

For it happens with all the holes and wounds: they bleed, they mend, they heal — and what don't they do as I stand here, as I bend, as I kneel — as I carve these seats in shapes of departure. Those skills thicken under my feet like growling tremors.

My past was but a dream — and I'm ready to slide like a crumbling leaf. My weariness is universal. My knowledge heavy. There cannot be a conclusion. I am growing thin.

Let me feed those roots anew.
Through and through.