and during a short-lived friendship
with a woman, we spoke
at length about impermanence.
she, who since her teens has not been
more than a month or two without
romantic companionship, quoting Rilke, in reverie
of solitude. i wonder if we felt
the frailty of our own
shared blossom, in our fervent inspection
of impermanence? knowing without
the shout of active knowledge, that we
were meant for brevity? and i, so many years
wending winded plains, companionless.
memory lasts long if you let it.
and it, whatever it is, hurts
right along its length. and maybe
i misunderstand solitude, thinking
my solitary life is in keeping with grace.
i’ve felt myself lonely
while with others and known myself
in rapture while alone; right now
there is a wind storm shuffling through
the Fall leaves of this, my current
coastal town. rain brings round
companionship to wind’s apophatic form,
each individual bead lending its singular might
to the collective, drumming and soaking
in their communal delight. i am alone
in a brief home, memories bring me
brutality and bloom. and the wind
outside, parting itself to make way
for those with more solidity, filling up
others who allow it
temporary inhabitance. these men and women
who once allowed exchanges
of love, they too are of the wind.
all of us, listening for an utterance
to form, asking; who are you?
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