Fleeing Shadow Poem by Manabendra Lal Bhuyan

I was cycling through the night.
A house lamp spilled light on the road,
and I saw my shadow fall behind,
sprinting to catch me.
Then I crossed the beam,
and it fled ahead,
wild, free for a breath,
before the dark swallowed it whole.

Within a moment,
ambition, freedom, rebellion;
longing, hope, memory;
seeing them shoot ahead, like the shadow.
The instinct to outpace one's source.
As it ran too far from the light that gave it life…
not destroyed, not punished; dissolved.
Untraceable.

Drifting too far without carrying our light with us.
One's self, one's grounding, one's origin…
The other, the moments, the glimpse…
Leads to disappearance, into the vast irrelevant.
Like a shadow fleeing the lamp that made it visible.