I’m lonely;
I’ll make me a world,
God said.
Now comes the echo,
in winter wind
— loneliest sound —
that lifts dead leaves
like empty chalices,
a last offering
before ice that freezes
even loneliness,
and the moldering carpet
woven by the wind
becomes blanket
for wiggly unseens.
And yet
I’m lonely
lingers:
each of us,
after all,
only one.
With thanks to James Weldon Johnson for his poem “The Creation,”
and to the anonymous student
in a high school speech meet many years ago
who put it in my head.
November 18, 2021 at 8:09 pm
Nice. I might have to show more respect for all those leaves I’ve been raking. 🙂
November 18, 2021 at 9:01 pm
Thanks! And that would be a serious spread of leaves!
November 18, 2021 at 11:09 pm
“…becomes blanket for wiggly unseens” Oh how that reminds me of the year we didn’t rake any leaves. We left everything until spring and we had a biology project when we started cleaning the yard in April.
November 19, 2021 at 12:05 am
Euw! I don’t doubt that — suddenly the unseens are very seen!
November 19, 2021 at 10:47 pm
‘Ice that freezes / Even loneliness’ gave me pause – it’s a powerful thought. I have been looking at the fallen leaves along the pavement on my solitary walks and having the opposite thought – how they seem to socialise or at least gather and mix. They do not exactly move in ways the human mind might predict… or at least not this one.
November 20, 2021 at 12:13 am
Thoughts on leaves and leaf society…how interesting our different impressions. And also how interesting the sameness of our watching.
November 20, 2021 at 9:28 am
Watching and wondering – yes.