In many cultural and spiritual traditions, four Elements comprise the building blocks of our planet: Earth, Air, Water, Fire. Spirit is also often considered an element.
But there is a sixth element, in my view: Shadow. What is a shadow, that ephemeral and perplexing thing? It has form but not substance. It is both stationary and mobile. It appears and it disappears, lives and dies and lives again. It is a thing unto itself.
And if, as I like to imagine, there are Elementals all around us –– beings bound to a specific Element, like Sylphs to Air and Undines to Water -- then surely there are Elementals of Shadow, too. When I gaze out my second story window past the prairie, into the dark recesses of the woodland beyond, I think I see The Shadowlings move and metamorphose. I see them dance!
∞∞∞
The Shadowlings
Words, music, and vocals by Diane Laura Rains. Hammered dulcimer by Stu Janis.
Copyright © 2019 by Diane Laura Rains. All Rights Reserved.
∞∞∞ LYRICS ∞∞∞
We are the Shadowlings. We are the Dark —
the form you cannot see.
We smolder quietly under each spark.
We peer out from every tree.
We are of Earth, and we are of Sky.
We are the calm of the night.
In our arms deep roots are tethered to ground.
We give the blackbirds flight!
We appear substanceless in the betweens
where day concedes to night.
We give definition to luminous scenes,
without us there would be no light!
We tumble and change. We shrink and we grow.
Our mutable, shapeshifting dance
sways with each leaf and soars with each crow.
Our dark arms caress and entrance.
We are not quenched by the fires of sun.
We multiply in vivid light.
Cyclical battles we’ve lost and we’ve won,
for day can’t exist without night!
In lightning-ripped sky and ocean abyss,
strange shapes coalesce in our ink.
We rattle in hollows where gnarled gnomes exist.
We’re deep in your mind, where you think.
We contour the lands
and shelter the stars in our hands.
We hold the planets in place,
woven into the black voids of space.
In the shadows beyond human sight,
our restlessness grows toward the night.
Light as silk in a web spiders wove,
we are shades wafting through shaded groves.
We hide ‘til the sun sinks in the west.
Absence is what we do best!
In the twilight time we emerge
as the bonfires of daylight are purged.
And we dance in the dark
to the song of the cuckoo and lark
in the darkness we made for ourselves
by the quicksilver foxfires of elves.
Tangled brambles behind secret doors
polish our dark dancing floors!
In rocky, cavernous vaults
the Shadowlings gather to waltz!
