“Alone”

 

c. 2025 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(7-25)

 

 

Fifteen years alone

A feat most certainly unintended

Life choices gone astray

For an aging fool, rarely befriended

Stiff and slow on the move

Stooped and stumbling throughout the day

My pace matches the need

Surrounded by what has gone away

Gone away

 

A single, solitary man

Once tunefully celebrated in song

A keeper of random hours

A schedule shot from dusk to dawn

If I take my chair

And compose a sonnet sans the sunshine

It is for the good I work

Neil Diamond’s yield is fully mine

Fully mine

 

Some view this path I take

And pity what they see in the light

But I have no sorrow over fate

I am glad to labor in the night

Cares and causes take effect

I move in silence to the next

Pages flipped with deliberate force

To keep all my woes in check

Woes in check

 

How odd it is to recall

That once I did my best to schlub

A face that shined with hope

I wanted membership in the club

Yet now the truth is seen

I do not care for that affection

I’ll gladly steal the shadows

And use those shades for my protection

My protection

 

I went a week or more

Without any contact being made

No other human soul

Pierced the bubble to invade

That brief span of liberation

Thrilled me with an empty pause

I felt as if a gift had landed

Falling from the sleigh of Santa Claus

Santa Claus

 

Sympathy would turn me weak

So with deaf ears, I beheld the protest

Of well-meaning minds

That sought to ease the loneliness

But in the hour of midnight

When a moonburned sky peeks through my glass

I give thanks for emptiness

Give thanks for getting a pass

Getting a pass

 

Ginsberg and Kerouac

Speak to me when the clock ticks down

I hear their verses echo

From closet crypts to my shantytown

If I would be so bold

To swing my quill in a deliberate act

I hope to be forgiven

For the talent that I lack

Talent that I lack

 

The embrace of self is proper

When no other heart exists

To contemplate the orbit

Of a purposed, planetary riff

A time to ponder circumstances

A time to ease myself into the naught

A time to feast upon

The guilt that a sinner wrought

Guilt that a sinner wrought

 

Maybe this task, undertaken

Means less that I might have desired

Yet the bottom line goes reeling

It Is a reason to conspire

If I might turn some heads

By going too long without quoting Voltaire

Neglect will shield those mistakes

And keep me gladly unaware

Gladly unaware

 

Kick the metaphor into shape

Lingering too long on the tongue

If effort must drive the seeker

Then I will be the prodigal son

Off schedule, and far behind

Was my tardy dance a surprise?

I’ll bow my head as a penance

And deferentially close my eyes

Close my eyes

 

Fifteen years spent alone

A feat never before celebrated

Life choices gone in smoke

For an aging fool, gangly gaited

Stiff and slow with breaths that come

Noisily, throughout the day

My pace matches the bent

Of a creator’s direction in chalk, erased

Chalk erased