Shadow, Alice Oswald

I'm going to flicker for a moment
and tell you the tale of a shadow
       that falls at dusk
              out of the blue to the earth
              and turns left along the path to here

              groggily under its black-out
              being dragged along crippled over things as if broken-winged

not yet continuous
no more than a shiver of something
with the flesh parachute of a human opening above it

but lengthening a little as it descends through the rings
of one hour into the next

              with the rooks flying upwards snipping at the clouds

until at last out of that opening here it lies
my own impersonal pronoun
crumpled under me like a dead body

it is faint
it has been falling for a long time

look when I walk
it's like a pair of scissors thrown at me by the sun
so that now as if my skin were not quite tucked in
       I am cold cold
trying to slide myself out of my own shade
but hour by hour more shade leaks out

       or if I stand
              if I move one hand
       I hear the hiss of flowers closing their eyelids
       and the trees
as if dust was being beaten from a rug
              shake out their birds and in again

it's as if I've interrupted something
that was falling in a straight line from the eye of God

       and if I do nothing
       the ground gives up
       the almost minty clarity of its grass begins to fade
       the white moths under the leaves
                     are amazed

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