The Game

NOON. The scorching sun is high in the

Sky: bright, blazing and merciless. An

Indistinguishable spectacle of living

Objects, scuttling and slithering their

Way across the shifting surface of an

Immeasurable expanse, are collectively

Exposed to the sudden violence of a

Heliacal oppressor and quickly organise

Themselves into two separate factions.

Some, flirting with destiny, continue to

Tolerate the stinging haze whilst others

Flee into a creeping shadow-world in

Which creatures both large and small

Hide from the encroaching daylight in

The way that a desperate fugitive might

Try to evade the clutches of his pursuers.

Once again, a divine hand has redrawn

The ever-changing line in the sand and

Half-sunken rocks, defiant tufts of grass

And disconsolate heaps of bleached

Bone, each subject to the optical contrast

That divides light and dark, seem to

Possess two distinct characters. They

Hover, Janus-faced, 'twixt a rigorous

Duality of kingdoms that impose their

Stark demarcation of territory until

Diligent Father Time says otherwise.

And so it is that the fleeting passage of

Half-light transitions into semi-darkness

And vice versa. At dawn it begins again.

But 'tis only a game, a temporary smoke-

Screen by which the illusory shades of

Earth's artificial polarity are seen to guard

The impenetrable Secrets of the Absolute.

© Troy Southgate