PLUPERFECT

"...he makes the shadow, he pursues." 
—Coleridge, "Constancy to an Ideal Object"

Walking eastward
around sunset,

you get

smeared out in-

discriminately—
all over town. Somewhere,

a longish
ways behind you

back there,

your colossal 

old shadow 

is smarting—from 

the pain of now

having 

to work
through something,

which you failed

at doing

yesterday.

And back

up ahead, the rose
colored skin of to-

night's body—

detects a sympathetic

thin twinge 

of this shady feeling,

though it

only just

barely registers it—

a slight,

curious

shiver

in the gloaming,
as it 

mutely stumbles

to remember—

how it wasn't

at all! happy

when it
happened;

but it sure is 

now—that it 

already did.