Does Light Dream of Shadow?

A wandering child finds a shadow-show:

watches the pale tarp contort the gloom,

where a story is painted by the loss –

the audience are cast in analogies of Plato

and trapped in their own velvet cave.

But the child is not fooled by umbral memories

of light behind the veil and strikes

a tiny finger upon the screen:

tracing the pigments and dimensions,

fluttering the cloth, and sending the darkness

dancing like a spectre or a moth or an imitation

of the last candle and its nightmare

of absence.