Today's little poem recreates a childhood memory of the sound of my voice coming back to me, not literally saying, "lonely, lonely," but giving me a feeling of being alone in those woods, with just that echo for company.
Of course, this was only a momentary feeling, for there were other adventures to pursue, other trails to explore, other bluffs to climb, other voices to hear ... either those voices answering me or those calling me on.
Still, recognition that, for the moment, I was all alone there, listening, not to someone else repeating what I'd just said, but to my own young voice bounding faintly back to me, was a feeling not easily forgotten.
I still think of it sometimes when I become immersed in a certain kind of quiet.
Memories! How we cherish them, make them forever ours, polish them, enhance them, store them away, pull them out to comfort us in our old age.
ECHO
The sound of my voice
hurried through the woods,
past sandstone bluffs,
went running across
cooling ridges,
dipped into hollows,
then came back to me,
repeating
lonely, lonely ... lonely.
©
1997(originally published in Midwest Poetry Review)
***
Today's word:
repeating
2 comments:
Your poem strikes a chord and I always felt I was the one that was off base when I felt that lonelyness when I was "little". I would sometimes be lonely with people around me. I'd tell my mom that I was lonesome with the whole family around me in a tiny house. She had an understanding, all knowing expression on her face, yet a sort of smile--a wise one...knowing she'd been there, done that, maybe. Perhaps she still did...never thought of that before. The feeling would leave me, though and I was happy and vivacious again. Maybe growing up isn't as easy as it seems to older people.
Reminds me of being a kid, climbing the plum tree with a book and sitting up there for hours propped between limbs. Feeling like I was alone and the plum tree light years away from the great big world.
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