Shadows and Voices (to the first cast)
J.T. Ledbetter
prologue
in this play there are many shadows and voices
watch and listen and do not fear
we but fool ourselves awhile
on the stage there are many shadows
one may have touched yours (imagine it)
two angular pieces of night thrown against
the wall by light or fire
side-glanced as the shoulder turned—
but this is the place of missed cues and
entrances in someone else's clothes
cozy backstage shadows where talk and love
and song reinvented themselves
among recruits to the business of just being
whoever they were at that moment
with that wonderful nonchalance of falling
in and out of love or not caring if
it was love
just loafing against each other watching
someone braid someone's hair
cooing at the nape of a slender neck very
soft and very female very pack-like
tongues flicking and caressing the sleep out
of each other's eyes
while men sat awkwardly on that sagging sofa
wondering what it all meant
cuffing each other in brotherly hints of what
they might know and might say
if only women weren't forever preening
themselves in packs like that
you'd think at least one would walk by herself
down that winding corridor into the dark
and when the lights came up we stood at the
brink of that static sea
where eyes and hearts watched and mouths hungry
for love tasted the air for signs of fear
as we said the lines and sang the songs
danced the dances and lit the lights and mixed
the sound and paraded props
in and out up and down and over in clothes
we barely dreamed about
and would never wear again except in our
own secret silent pride at having
worn them once then danced out of them
after pouring ourselves into characters
we loved and we hated wondering what this
one-sided thing of giving was all about
this molding/joining breathing life into a jumble
of words and a red dress
coached and prompted from the script in fierce-love
strange necessary umbilical feeding feeding feeding
until the lights dimmed and it broke
epilogue
you can almost hear our shadows carrying
their own slight heft
and meaning into the audience where someone snores
behind a program
and the lady from out of town holds a rose tightly
a single dot of red inside her soft white hand
(across town three men in a dingy bar do not
applaud the final scene
they do not know the exhaustion and exhilaration
or the pathetic panting after immortality
as the last words faded
before the lights cooled out defining nothing etching
nothing
against the echoes of our voices and the shadows we
love but cannot touch)
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