Now that I'm actually living my solitude I'm clueless. <br />Every now & then the wind drops in & I look at it. <br />These are the signs of seasonal change: I'm not sweating, <br />& the hollow air in the chimney makes a thrumming noise. <br />The doves outside my house look like they're waiting <br />at a bus stop & puff into little black & grey pots when <br />the wind blows or when the rain comes down in columns. <br />Now that it's quiet in my house I can't really think <br />without thinking & I can't really talk without meaning <br />something else, so I shut up. Some days I wish I was <br />back at the factory, moving heavy objects & grunting. <br /> <br />They start out looking for a handout, then they get used to it, <br />the birds. What's weird is I think they don't know why <br />they come anymore, now that I've stopped feeding them. <br />Frankly, they tend to be undifferentiated & cutely stupid. <br />Once, when one fell off the wall, I thought I had something, <br />it was so embarrassed, lying there like a ruffled pompom <br />with a black tack for a head. Turned out it was dead. <br />I was so alienated I mailed it back without a stamp, but <br />I said this prayer for it: Bless every living thing... <br /> <br />I didn't mean to exclude it. <br /> <br />Shortly afterward I was bombed by a traveling flock <br />of chickadees fresh from a meeting on a rotten stump. <br />When you're alone every damn word you say has got <br />to be how you feel, & then you've got to live with it. <br />I think I'll entertain myself by not experiencing anything. <br />Word on the mountain is that the wabi of consciousness <br />is all your living minus all your accumulated experience. <br />That's why the chickadees attacked, because I'd blown it.<br /><br />Jon Anderson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/exiled-on-mountain-bewail-fate-amp-praise-autumn/
