Alone

Alone - a reading (on YouTube)


I trade warm, yellow companionship and ruddy, wine-filled laughter

For the slaty blues and greens and purple-grays of stark outside,

The silence of a bruise, bleak yet more alive.

Each footfall crunches deeper into snow-shrouded leaves

Where icy moonlight reveals the tiny bones of childhood memories,

Their skeletal remains filling in behind me like a fading reminiscence.

Grief, once carved in stone, now stands bright green with forgetfulness

Softened by lichens grown lush through an unending reign of tears

Dulling an upside-down world with well-stropped silver linings.

I retreat toward echoing solitude, a candle in a vast expanse.

Words become my playmates like made-up games when I was young.

Soundscapes and small dramas become my closest friends, imaginal yet dear.

A tiny orange beacon guides me home, my shadow long before me.


Text © 2013 Edward P. Morgan III
Photo © 2012 Sonya Reasor (guest photographer)