i.
bird and shadow
Throughout the empire, birds cast their own shadows. Gulls, called to the continent’s interior by food or curiosity, bring enormous shadows with them, as do condors, vulture, storks, and pelicans. These shadows rush along on both land and water. Their movement exactly imitates the birds hundreds of feet above. Though these shadows are free to escape the birds, they never do.
Some ornithomancers, who foretell the future from the dance of a bird’s flight, believe that the shadows own the birds, and fly the creatures like kites. Watch the shadows, they tell their apprentices, not the birds.
ii.
when a bird falls to earth
When an arrow drops a bird from the sky, its shadow will continue rushing across the ground, then suddenly double back and circle the bird’s body. From this behavior, some have insisted that birds and their shadows are lovers, bound to each other for life, and that after the bird’s death, the shadow gradually drifts and fades from grief.
iii.
the shadow that jumped into the sea
A shadow long shamed or abused by its owner will sometimes jump from the corniche into the sea, hoping to become the shadow of a fish or a bird. A man may try desperately to recover his shadow, but the water’s glitter and darkness will hide it from his eyes.
The citizen who loses his shadow in this way is like a man whose clothes so hate his body that they run off in disgust. Such a man is an object of ridicule and contempt.
You will not often see shadowless men. Humiliated, they remain in their rooms, wandering out of doors only on moonless nights.
is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Three Hundred Streets of Venice California (FutureCycle Press, 2023). His latest work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Times, Plume, The Moth (Ireland), The Irish Times, BarBar, and elsewhere. He lives in Venice, California.
