4. The Loyal Shadow

The shadow that hangs from any regular thing
Never seeks for what’s more, nor has the heart to complain.
 It shuns what is wrong, but avoids what is right
And it flees from the transition of morning to night;
Yet it reappears every day, for it never had gone astray
Though no heed or attention to it do we pay.
No; we just wander on, as it traverses the lawn,
As on it no thought or care is mentioned upon.
When our road has been paved, and we enter the grave,
That void is now no longer our slave.
But with us it stays, though sunlight it craves,
As it wastes away, hidden, never to behold the light of day.
Well, it may truly know, through the sun and the snow,
We supplied it with shelter, so it could continue to grow.
We didn’t care that it was there, its contract was fair;
It would stay by our side until the fabric of time would tear.
With us till the end, though we don’t call it a friend,
Even when we’re alone and our bones start to bend.
Oh, what is the price to find someone so nice
To be a sixth as devoted Christ’s sacrifice?
Nay; rarely a soul today would be honest to say,
“I was with them throughout the most boisterous fray.”
Though we search high and low, from the deep to the shallow,
We will never find something on Earth more devoted than a shadow.