I mentioned in yesterday's BLOG that I'VE BEGUN AGAIN construction of verses I call CONVERSATIONS WITH MYSELF. Every other stanza is the mirror speaking back to me. I'll see if I can keep track of which of the stanzas are mine and which are the mirrors. I won't do this every day... Maybe a couple every week. We'll see how it goes.
LONELINESS IS GOOD IN SHORT DOSES

Salinger was hiding something.
Loneliness is good in short doses,
But I wouldn’t want a steady diet
Of solitary sundowns on the prairie
Or sailing solo across wide seas
With no breeze stirring for days.

You buy into the supposition then
That life alone is wasted mostly...
Living things aren’t meant to be alone.
What about the flower that blooms once
In the desert and isn’t seen at all
Except perhaps by hawks and wolves?

Why do you think the wolf howls and cries,
Head thrown back and lifted toward the moon?

Does it mourn for itself and for all things living,
Having seen the flower growing just to die?
Or is it in celebration of optimistic blooming,
A cry of hope against the darkness of the night?

The male orangutan, they say, lives alone
always away from others of his kind.
The great orange creature hunkers down
High up in his nest of sticks and leaves
Above the forest floor and waits and listens
For an invitation that almost never comes.

Do you bring him up in conversation
To remind us both that we are cousins
To the golden solitary ape stuck in time
While we moved on... evolved... became
Something so involved in fighting time
That we forgot to learn to be alone?

Memory is not a mirror, you know.
Guess again why it is we never learned
And go on stuck only to each other...
You need more than just me and you
alone facing each other in the bathroom
when you shave and brush your teeth.

All artists know what loneliness can buy
and what desirable companionship can cost.
Vincent didn’t cut off his ear for nothing...
And Frida was run over by a street bus.
You see what I mean... Kafka had an inkling
but he finally died of tuberculosis anyway.

Don’t forget for a minute Humpty Dumpty
Might not have gone to pieces tragically
If he’d had the good sense to refuse
To get up there on the wall by himself?
Pay attention to options... little decisions...
Know how to get off or don’t go up at all.