Shadows at Noon

The shadow of the oak deepens, pools of ink beneath its branches—where the light refuses to go, we imagine all we cannot see.

A child's hand moves through it, dissipates, reforms, a ghost learning its own boundaries in the language of the sun.

By evening, the shadow stretches, becomes a highway leading nowhere, a ladder climbing down into the earth where roots remember earlier light.

In darkness, there is no shadow— only the memory of light pressing against what it could not touch, and the small rebellion of stars.