— The Shadow Guards —

Just beyond the plate glass…

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It was a normal sunny morning when I went to the large plate window. Looking out over Nashville as the morning sun creeps up the sky, I could not let the crawling shadows go unnoticed. I watched them first small and short just below the signs; then stretching long like other worldly alien fingers reaching from the point of contact with the ground to some unmarked distance relative to the sun's location. I notice how much darker the negative shapes are on the grass as if there were no grass as the shadows grew longer. 

Parking lots and cars have their shadows too; but much less dramatic. Even in the darkness of the shadows, the breeze moves the young grass making the shadows sway. Each observation spawns another thought, disjointed from logic but connected all the same. Why are the shadows different on the pavement than the grass? Does the grass attempt to hide some part of its sight from the brilliant radiance? How do the shadows change the color of whatever it touches but leave it the same? I watch the little grackles jump and bounce in the grass changing colors as they pass from light to shadow, carelessly eating worms or bugs beyond my vision. Here we all are, nestled between the stone monuments of cityscape architecture but the most fascinating things are still the things that were here before man, before his trash, in spite of his intrusions.

The shadows stand and never tire. The reach and never strain. Tall or short, moving or still; they are always the same, absent but present. Maybe they are like the clouds – looking solid but planes fly through them, vaporous and mystical.