When dusk hands off its day to night
and light begins to coalesce with afterglow
a certain calm descends upon the great
wonders of the world.

“Why do the world’s shadows come so close
as its wonders beckons?”

The pyramids, the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China
Chichen Itza, Notre Dame, the Forbidden City, all great
wonders of the past, cast real shadows, dark forms
that spread upon the ground like puddles
but their metaphorical shadows might be the cost of lives
it took to build or the use for which they were made:
honor, religion, politics, defense.

The modern wonder of my lifetime, the Atomic Bomb
cast the shadow of a mushroom cloud of self-destruction.

If the question is, what is the relationship between shadow
and wonder, construction and destruction, the answer might
be, a case of intensity- so much of reality has always been
a matter of power and force.