Better a monosyllabic life than a ragged
and muttered one; let its report be short
and round like a rifle, so that it may hear
its own echo in the surrounding silence.
THOREAU
A life: pared to the bone.
Think of a room with no
chair, no bed. Like a monk,
I sit on a black square
in a patch of light.
In my mind, I sit there.
Or, a life on the road
that takes me here, there,
the trees in fall so bare.
And I with just
the rags on my back,
a gnarled stick to lean on.
Your life, held next
to mine, is rich and fat.
You walk with a pack
and wear a big straw hat
that blocks the sun.
You like things loud,
loud songs, and beat
a drum as you walk.
Hoooo there! you call,
but I let you pass.
The days and years
mount up as I walk on
toward a word dark
as night, black as pitch,
still as a held breath.
A place where a night
bird sings. It sounds
like Keats so I stop.
I build a fire,
sleep like the dead,
dream of a bright star,
and wake at dawn,
the sweet bird gone.
Then rise, splash my face
from the stream. Up the road,
a few souls, gray as time,
stand in a patch of shade,
their arms held out.
So it was for this! I think,
This life, this road! This!
and run as I have never
run, back to the beginning,
the very beginning.
They are all
where I left them.
And there is so much to say.
- by Elizabeth Spires