The Distance with Your Shadow

In that sleepy coffee town
Of tourists and tin-shacks,
You barged in with your backpack,
Armed with your camera.
Leaving behind
As you stood
For the perfect shot,
Rows of other cameras held
In less perfect hands.

Behind you also,
Heads, unglamorous,
Fading in the mist,
And below,
Many feet of unknown terrain.
Used tea-cups,
Cigarette ends.

We sat
Thinking over them,
The next morning.
Remember?
Who could have held them,
Where could they
Further land.

They have lost their colour
From where I see them now.
Distant than the green, the brown
That would gobble them then.

The mist crowned us.
You said I was an angel
In your dream.
We flew over a sleepy town,
As in Chagall's canvasses,
They who fly, do.

We had wished
To return,
To those dreams.

Look now,
How I stand over
That endless brown.
While all that's left of you
Is a mere shadow,
In that sleepy coffee town.