by Jonathan Gellman
In the mid-morning, mid-autumn sun, four oaks,
having cast their leaves, now pitch bold shadows
that march uphill toward a lone white shed.
As our national tree, oaks speak in varied hues
and with diverse accents shaped by region.
White and red oaks lead the list, but
fifty-plus species feature black oaks, and
southern oaks (the Arkansas, southern red,
Texan live, Texas red, and southern live oaks).
And varied swamp oaks suggest murky unions:
swamp white, swamp laurel, and swamp chestnut oaks.
An hour’s portion later, two towering oaks
displace the primary shadows
cast earlier by neighboring trees,
repainting the canvas with two broad bars.
Following the sun, those bars rotate rearward
from a sideline axis, leaving tracks
that narrow and then converge off-field.
Meanwhile, the foreground is consumed slowly
by the dark profile of the viewer’s house.
These sunlit oaks issue tracking polls for prophets
that change daily but follow a seasonal course.
The sun projects trees into recurring shadows
that remark the land with transient impressions.
While dark shadows hint at the sinister,
they cannot be or move without bright sunshine.
Shadows seeking their source see mighty oaks,
but are blind to the sunlight behind them.
From high nests far below the heavens
starlings strain to freeze the sun in one place
and stop the ebb of early shadow tracks.
But growth depends on light and shadow moving
in a steady cycle of successive imprints, as
unsheltered ground would be scorched by the sun, while
unbroken shadows favor moss and mushrooms.
On an autumnal field a swirling dance resumes between
the light of democracy and its shadowy partners:
shadow dwellers praise and resent the power
that democracy lends and takes back daily.
Apart from past work on memos and contracts in his legal career, Jonathan Gellman’s writing has focused on American literature, history, and politics. His poem in Voices sees in the movement of forest shadows across a backyard on a day in November the recurring back-and-forth drama of American politics. In part, the poem indirectly pushes back against the Washington Post’s front-page slogan that “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”