Winter Amnesties

Shadows by Giacometti

34 Shadows by Giacometti It’s one of those November days unlikely in Ohio, when even the sun becomes an optimist, and gold leaves glare back like the mother lode. Inside, I watch the morning lawn, as rough shapes spindle from the feet, shadows by Giacometti—the dark scissor of the legs, the head an empty oval, a nodding lump. Who are these shaggy effigies that people drag behind them, freak silhouettes that stretch and heel? They might be some saint fed up with fasting but still proud of her wounds, or some rumwreck driven by the fidgets, a brute moving in a bootleg dream. I twist the blinds down against the light, the diamonds of dawn that split us from ourselves, leaving half of what we are shaken on the earth, a low revelation level with the dew, the worms’ warm sheen like the scars of autumn. ...