Where the Shadow Used to Fall Sketch

It has taken a week to get this sketch done.  The piece is 20x30 inches. I've had this title for a many months now, and a vague image concept for it in mind. It just took a while for the definitive shape to emerge. I had several possible thumbnail sketches in my sketchbook, and one that I almost started drawing, but they weren't quite right. I'll post those later.

It's to be a painting for a fallen tree.

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We walked once where the shadow used to fall:

  watched the eclipse blot out the sun,

    and the streaming beams between the

      pinhole gaps of leaves became

        a cascade of glowing crescents across the ground.

Where the shadow used to fall,

  the rain did not.

    Dense, dry, fallen carpet of the years

      pooled at the Giant's feet.

        Blanket of crisp leaves and needles. Sap and compost.

My shadow falls, where its shadow used to fall;

  and when the sun fades to my back,

    I stand upon the hundred rings.

    I reach my fingers up up UP to a ghost canopy.             

    The sunset melts amber sap down my shoulder blades,

      down my spine.

        And I watch as my shadow grows tall,

          then melts into the shadow-less evening.