Shadows Among the Light

(A Found Poem Based on William Golding’s novel “Lord of the Flies”, pg. 7-90)

The slow swing from dawn to quick dusk

The pleasures of morning, the bright sun, the whelming sea and sweet air

Stark colors of the morning were smoothing in pearl and opalescence

The glittering sea rose up, moved apart in planes of blatant impossibility

Water drew to a point at infinity

Beyond that the open sea was dark blue

Perspectives of beach and palm tree

The white surf flunked on a coral reef

The shore was fledged with palm trees reclined, against the light

Their green feathers were a hundred feet up in the air

It was bright with the efflorescence of the tropical weed and coral

The tangled reflections quivered

Darkness poured out, submerging the ways between the trees

Dim and strange as the bottom of the sea

The trickle of smoke sketched a chalky line up the solid blue sky

As if something’s behind you all the time in the jungle

The smoke drifted away, thickening, and a tiny flame appeared

The flames, as though they were a kind of wild life, crept as a jaguar creeps

They flung themselves down in the shadows that lay among the shattered rocks

Beneath them, on the unfriendly side of the mountain, the drum roll continued

Echoes and birds flew

White and pink dust floated

The air was thick with butterflies

Lifting, fluttering, settling

And spilled lavishly among the canopy of the forest.

And then the island was still.