I took my shadow for a walk today

I took my shadow for a walk today
Though perhaps
it is my shadow taking me for this walk
Sometimes it is hard to tell between us who it is that is walking whom
We are like that you see

Inseparable
More often than I care to admit
it is hard to distinguish
one of us from the other
Though I do my best

to keep a watchful eye
on my ever-present companion
sometime he walks behind me—out of sight
And only in hindsight can I see
his behaviors acting independently of my sworn intentions

So I have painfully discovered
it is best to make friends with one’s shadow
as best I can anyway
For who knows what energy and wisdom
lies sleeping in the unconscious

Carl Jung’s primeval 2 million-year-old man
is but a youth when I drop deeper
and touch if only for the briefest moment the birthing of the cosmos
itself the great inhalation

that is also my birth—the birthing of this body anyway
in which the entire intelligence and wisdom of the universe
lies awaiting awakening
right here
into recognition of identity and belonging.