I wandered lonely as a
woman wandering alone
amid the bustle of an exclusive life.
Beneath the stalks
stalk things unseen to me and mine,
the flat-feet
who blunder by,
leaving footprints, carbon and otherwise,
on the bodies of the unseen and unheard.
She wanders lonely,
even when she is not alone,
just on the other side of a comforting veil,
treading flat-footed,
hands over her ears
to keep out the screaming.
you didn’t wander lonely as a cloud😀.
well done Jane.
🙂 The clouds aren’t lonely round here! Far too many of them. We were supposed to get sunshine today 😦
😀😀😀
we’re never alone. Even when we’re on our own there seems to be bustle. Still waiting for sunshine here too 😦
I just had a poem published on the Pendemic site and they sent me a message asking would I like to send this guy Andrew a letter. I read his story (you probably already knew about it) https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/father-of-three-deceased-children-appeals-for-letters-during-isolation-1.4214153
and had a look at his lad’s twitter account. Jesus, I couldn’t stop crying. Alone, that’s what he feels now. I’ll never give out at mine again.
Oh yes, its so sad 😥😥😥
Can’t imagine how the man’s coping at all.
Unimaginable. He lives not far from us. 😥
I wondered. He’s meeting his grief head on, looking at it every minute of the day. I’d be dead in a hole somewhere if it was me.
Oh my god. I can’t imagine. I can’t even imagine going on.
I’m glad the newspaper article was discreet and respectful. That man must be going through hell.
Yes, I agree. (Of course.)
Loneliness that privilege conceals. If wonder if anyone will hear the screaming. I admire the start, a contemporary take on the start of Wordsworth’s poem. How it is to wander now.
There are all sorts of ways of being alone, of deliberately ignoring what we’re walking on, as if nobody can see what we’re doing, hear what we’re saying. It’s not so easy as black/white, man/woman, rich/poor, but you can juggle with those parameters and end up with a combination that makes you relatively untouchable.
There is being alone, and there is really being alone like that man who even if he was standing in a crowd would still feel alone.
I know. There can be no faces he cares about at all. It puts our little gripes into perspective, and our complaints at having to stay indoors. Imagine what staying indoors means for him. I can’t.
No, I can’t either.
😦
In those lives, everything is broken. Alone and lonely are not the same thing. (K)
There are endless ways of being alone too. Some are voluntary, the isolation of the well-fed, the safe from war, the healthy. Some are the abandoned and the used. We all have our secret shame, or at least, we should.
Brilliant. I love this. The words are perfectly aligned. I think we’ve all been there. Thanks for sharing
Thank you! We have developed lots of ways of being alone when it suits us. Not knowing can be very comforting.