Umbra

by Frances Boyle

​You won’t recognize yourself in my words;
you are shapeshifter and I—I hang onto
your coattails through tornado and turtle,
amoeba to galaxy. You won’t recognize

me either—the haunt that echoes you,
gives you a backbone of hammered steel,
walks beside you leaving mouse footprints
next to your mammoth ones. I am a veil

of rain over your forest, snow capping
your mountain. A shimmer in/out of view,
cherries picked for sour soup, my juice blotted
with dabbed Kleenex. Snake-slide of indecision,

and I, thrown from your bucking mare, am
a saddle that thuds to the corral’s trampled dirt.
The opening between clouds is neither you
nor me but the emptiness behind your eyes

when you’re panhandling in your blanket shawl
outside the mall, and I’m the Tim Hortons cup
where the odd coin might land. You’re the heavy
pendulum within the wall clock, its case of wood

and glass, its plain round face. A shutter
blink—gestures away—I am the shadow
of your moving hands. A weight upon me
as you become lighter. Knowledge like flour

through sifter, you the mesh at the bottom, me
the metal blades that push and turn. You shift
unseeing, unflinching, and I follow. Until
the two of us disappear in the vanishing point

of funnel cloud, intent lost in abstraction,
crispness obscured by motion. Your scroll’s
antique capitals, my illumination—in reds
and golds—of the cursive codex script.

Frances Boyle (she/her) is the author of three books of poetry, a short story collection, a novella and a forthcoming novel. Recent/upcoming publications include The Ex-Puritan, Ampersand, PRISM international, Vallum and Glass Poetry. Raised on the Canadian prairies, she lives in Ottawa.