By TheFeatheredSleepPosted on

When

The thick trunk of families, surges upward and onward

And the line thins out of impatient elbows

You stand as you always have

Alone

More conscious of their abundant overflow

At an airport without a ticket, watching throngs of souls

Connected and coming together, like migration encourages the swell and surge of birds riding warm air

Somehow knowing, they are part of a greater collective

And you stand there, in your well worn shoes

And your empty pockets ache, for someone to turn and say

Aren’t you with us?

Categories: #childhood #life #sadness #worth #writing UncategorizedTags: , , , , , , , ,

12 Replies to “Aren’t you?”

  1. The workup to the ending of the poem is masterful. And the way you’ve done these lines (particularly, the line breaks) is what caught my attention:

    “And you stand there, in your well worn shoes

    And your empty pockets ache, for someone to turn and say

    Aren’t you with us?”

  5. The most difficult part of living in this realm is the separation from the collective. Sebastian Junger in his book Tribe talks in great detail about the terrible loss / separation we feel in our society. It is why soldiers have such a hard time readjusting to civilian life, after years of living so close to each other, they feel cut off , alone – as if abandoned by their tribe …

  8. Oh my god I relate to this. I wrote a poem yesterday about being on the outside in childhood and just watching this flow of people and circumstance go by while feeling on the sidelines unseen unknown. This makes my heart break. <3

  10. Superb, Candy. Such a rendering of aloneness. (Most of my grandchildren, as you know, are girls. One of the two boys was so relived when his male cousin was born)

Comments are closed.