Summer Solstice

My dad is a shadow.

In childhood, I am a shadow too.

If each relationship is one complete life, I assume that as

two shadows my dad and I can be one, complete.

But for us the boundaries never meet,

are alike, but never connect.

Like summer recreation basketball, which I play because he

wants me to, not because I chose.

I practice the game while he watches from the side,

trying to understand my disinterest

with the rules of the game. Our misunderstanding

heightened with each slap of ball on wood.

Basketball requires some version of rhythm and accord,

while the shape of the team has nothing to do with

harmony. What is harmony anyway? Somebody else’s

interpretation of discord? The answer isn’t

as important in the simplicities of farm life.

In the summer, I work in the fields all day

to help my dad. Hard work doesn’t have rules,

just something to be done: filling wagons with rocks,

hay bales stacked tight to prepare for the winter.

But shadows are never simple. They are reflections

in a dark pool: they only tell half the story.

Maybe in the absence of trying so hard to understand

I will know.

Maybe the painter of shadows understands that when

dark outlines meet, the outline becomes more important

than what is in-between the curves.