Shadow Man

For Mac Adams, Artist

His palette is light,
in all its shades
and the holes it makes.

Conjuring with bulb,
fruit and a shock of grains
spilt across glass,

a dog, resting or dead,
a bird's kinetic moment
in the second before flight

or Karl Marx's head,
born from pebble and stone
into an absence of light.

He works with a darkness
behind his eyes,
understanding as he does

that it's not matter that matters,
or our thoughts and words,
but the shadows they throw

against the lives of others.