Shadow Baby

Dec. 7, 08

Shadow baby,
What have you learned from your stalking
Of the old despaired man lighting the lanterns
Across the way of a church with broken windows?

What stories have you told him yet, winter?
What metal work ways has he poured into your eyes,
They seem colder now like freezing iron-too soon seen.

Make believe his life as you've made believe your own,
Tell yourself you're different and by what you know
You have a father truly and he was as different as you.

Shadow baby,
What veil do you toss behind you so none can see?
What intelligent eyes don't tell and what a mouth
won't speak with too many others to listen around.

I'll laugh a smile and you'll smile an inward cry,
I won't notice my winter, because you hid in your cover,
And you may say I may have given them to you first ...

My darling, I'll tell none of your life you wish to know,
Take your future upon your stride and wish for well,
Be an adult with chickens and a baby with ignorance.

Shadow baby,
What have you learned from the metal sheets,
Your cold feet demanding to step inside his mind,
Keep blowing my winter, and by the luckless seasons
You'll never ever die.

*
If you've read
Shadow Baby by Alison McGhee this will make sense...If not...Well then some bits may not seem right to you...
Excerpt:
"Clara first spies him through the crack in the stained-glass window of her church,
lighting a string of handmade lanterns in the Adirondack woods. A lone old man, Georg Kominsky
moves stealthily among the shadow world of his hanging, glittering creations."
---
In Alison McGhee's stunning novel Shadow Baby, eleven-year-old Clara is struggling to find the truth
about her missing father and grandfather and her twin sister, dead at birth, but her mother steadfastly refuses
to talk about these people who are lost to her daughter. When Clara begins interviewing Georg Kominsky
for a school biography assignment, she finds that he is equally reticent about his own concealed history.
Precocious and imaginative, the girl invents version upon version of Mr. Kominsky's past,
just as she invents lives for the people missing from her own shadowy past.
The journey of discovery that these two oddly matched people embark upon is at the heart of this beautiful story about friendship and communion, about discovering what matters most in life, and about the search to find the missing pieces of ourselves. McGhee's prose glistens with shrewd truth and wild imaginings, creating a fine novel that will reverberate in the hearts and minds of readers long after the book is finished.

http://www.alisonmcghee.com/shadowbaby.html