Adrienne Rich

Years ago someone gave me a poem by Adrienne Rich.  It's been on my bulletin board ever since.

Song

You're wondering if I'm lonely:
OK then, yes, I'm lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.

You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely

If I'm lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawns' first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep

If I'm lonely
it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it's neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning

It was a poem that spoke to me who lived alone and yet seldom was lonely.  I thought of it often when I seized my collapsible aluminum walking stick and went down yet another trail or when I took my car out on some storytelling tour "driving across country day after day, leaving behind mile after mile".  

When my cousin Charles, together with Sean and Christo, decided to attack the Pacific Crest Trail, I yearned to be off on a trail of my own, to walk alone with nature and my thoughts for an entire summer, but with arthritic knees, I must settle for shorter hikes. I no longer can carry a heavy pack.  I watch their blog 3gaycaballeros.blogspot.com and worry about them when they haven't posted for a few days though I know full well they can't when they are so far from signals.  

I read Cheryl Strayed's Wild to get the feel of the trail, but that only assured me that I really was too old to endure such a trek.  I did get the list of the books she read on the PCT and one of them was Adrienne Rich's The Dream of a Common Language.  I got that collection of poetry.   Now I read one of the poems each night before I go to bed and let it sink in as I go to sleep.  When I finish this volume, I'll go on to others.  One book leads to another.  It has always been that way for me. 

Adrienne Rich died in March in her eighties.  It was too soon.