Poem by Quincy Troupe

Catching Shadows

it was a simple wish to touch an elusive enigma - 
a mysterious shadow crawling behind me 
when a toddler - eye reached out my tiny fingers
to stroke the wavy figure, undulating wildly
across the concrete sidewalk before it stamped 
its inky paradox on my flummoxed eyeballs,


eye remember trying to figure out the mystery 
the riddle imposed - like words my mother sought
to pull from her brain or snatch out of the air 
when she vexed over the daily crossword puzzles
she was addicted to back then, before she entered 
the looping cob-webbed world of dementia – 


shadows as illusory for a young boy like me to 
think through where the miracle of breathing came from, 
or the weather, if the sun, moon & stars were round 
as marbles eye saw packed into circles drawn upon dirt, 
or concrete back when big boys shot steel shooters like bullets 
into those circles, scattering them like roaches fleeing for cover 
when hot lights came on in empty kitchens after white folks 
sold their homes, moved on after blacks bought into
their leave it to beaver, archie bunker neighborhoods,
then marbles scattered quick when hit – 
like white folks did back in the day when young black bucks 
like me moved into houses next to them & they fled 
like birds flushed out of trees after hunters shots rang out sharp, cracking the chilled fall air, piercing as real bullets 
whistling thick past ears, winter slicing clean around corners 
deadly as razor blades ripping through clothes, 
or menacing as icicles dangling daggers over our heads, 


& as eye grew older my eyeballs popped bigger than a shooter 
marble made of steel trying to catch the idea why 
eye had to grow up in st. louis faster than the speeding years, 
or jack in the bean stalk around so many people - black & white – 
who hated me for no reason at all, except that eye was 
different from them – the way eye looked, talked, lived inside 
rhythms of music they hadn’t heard before – blues, jazz, 
gospel, whatever – played every day in my crowded living room  
where eye heard joy in black people singing their hearts out
in church, listening to hand-clapping syncopation 
jack-leg preachers infused like voodoo into their holy-
ghost, come to jesus sermons, all of it influenced 


& planted a new hip & dip into my fresh slick stride, 
wicked as uncertainty, it flew into a future echoing the deadly
meaning embedded into all the  shiny words eye heard politicians 
speak back then – though now they seem so elliptical, 
illusive, what a mendacious future promised to bring, though 
what it brought was a made-up world full of shiny objects
smooth as spit-shined words, slippery as grease -


so as eye grew up most people became shadows, 
elusive wavy figures my fingers tried desperately to touch -
easy to see, plain as day – paradoxes undulating wildly 
before my oscillating eyeballs, they were unknowable
as ghosts, or mysterious riddles like they always were,
constantly flummoxing  me - even here & now 
when remembering them in this poem - 


my eyeballs spinning around like pinballs 
dilating still inside my amplifying brain

Quincy Troupe is the author of 20 books, including 10 volumes of poetry and three children’s books. His awards include the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement, the 2003 Milt Kessler Poetry Award, The 2005 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award presented by Poets & Writers, three American Book Awards, the 2014 Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award and a 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award from Furious Flowers. His writings have been translated into over 30 languages and, in 2002 he was named the first official Poet Laureate of the State of California. Troupe’s latest book of poems is Errançities (2012). At the present time he has 2 new books of poems, Seduction and a book length poem titled, Ghost voices to he has two new books of poems: Seduction and Ghost Voices, a book length poem. He is also completing a novel, The Legacy of Charlie Footman; a memoir, Between Changes: The Accordion Years; and an untitled book of his non-fiction prose – essays, columns and articles. Mr. Troupe is co-author with Miles Davis of Miles: the Autobiography; Earl the Pearl with Earl Monroe; The Pursuit of Happyness, with Chris Gardner; the editor of James Baldwin: The legacy and co-editor (with Rainer Schulte) of Giant Talk; An Anthology of Third World Literature. Troupe's screenplay based on his book, Miles and me, a memoir of his friendship with Miles Davis, is scheduled for release as a major motion picture in late 2018 or early 2019.​Troupe is Professor Emeritus of the University of California, San Diego, edits Black Renaissance Noire at New York University, and lives in Harlem, New York with his wife, Margaret.

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