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Volume 33 Issue 1 Shadow & Light
 You can’t have a light
without a dark to stick it in.?
~Arlo Guthrie
In the physical realm, you can’t know the light without the shadow. On a personal level, I don’t think it’s any different. Dwelling only on the light in an attempt to avoid the shadow, distorts what is. The stories and poems that follow suggest a more integral view of shadow and light, one in which they might even be understood as “dependable companions.”
~Peter Anderson
Editor
I can’t sleep. The video player in my head runs nonstop and I can’t make it stop. I am swimming in Jello. An elephant is standing on my chest. I make wrong turns going to work and can’t decide what clothes to wear. My body is here, but I am a million miles away. From afar, I watch myself with the same detached interest I would use to examine a beetle in a shoebox. Something inside me has died. Where have I gone? ~From Waiting
by Deb Ligget
When I talk to my friends, I discover that most of them are up at night too. We cite our hormones, our fears, our stress. Jokingly, someone suggests we hold a symposium at 2 AM—we’re all awake anyway. But much as I love my friends and rely on them, I don’t want to talk to anyone at 2 AM. I relish the peace and quiet, even the tinge of sadness that solitude brings. ~From Up at Night–Again
by Miriam Sagan
My tears, held since before his death, are everywhere now. I crumble and fold and melt. And my uncles rise to take me, to stand me like a man. And we toast my father, his life, death on his own terms, and the conquest of heaven. And Tío Chu, the youngest, the strongest, the poet of them all, tells me that if I, “look past the silence in the wind, or the rage of my heart,” I will see and be with my father once again. ~From Tio Chu
Michael Sarabia
photo credit: Don Kirby (donkirbyphotography.com)
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