This is another poem by Michael Burkard. The poem speaks to the scapegoating by people in our culture of persons who are different. It may also suggest that the subject boy enjoys so much integrity that he has little or no shadow. We may feel the need to psychologically project our shadow stuff onto the boy who is to good to be true. Notice the first person is used in the first stanza, while the third person is used for the remainder of the poem.


THE BOY WHO HAD NO SHADOW

One thing led to another:
if I have no shadow
I will eventually be followed
by those who do have shadows.
Sooner or later they will greet me
at the river and, judging me
as peculiar, will shove me into the river
to drown.

And the boy who had no shadow was correct.
But before he was shoved into the river,
days and days before, he was asked innocent
questions by innocent bystanders:
“Does your mother have a shadow?”
“Were you conceived in the shadow?”
“Are you perhaps your own version
of your own shadow?”

And them were difficult questions
because he had no answer
---or, the boy who had no shadow
had no answer.


So they thought he was up to no good.
The questions became less innocent.
And because, by now, he was also judged
as not belonging to any crucial historical epoch,
he was shoved into the river
and kept beneath the surface by poles.

Not a particularly unique circumstance.
But the reason was unique and they knew that.
So, just to be sure, just to be sure
the boy had now shadow, they kept him down for days.

Lest the shadow which he had not,
which he had been murdered for,
escape in the river and flee.

Chuck