Friday, April 17, 2015

New Words and Images by Wayne H. W Wolfson

Hymn to Solitude


“Amour”, she would say that and little else. Then she would rest her head on my shoulder. After, she would disappear for at least a week or more. One of us was lying. The way that she said it, so gently but with such intensity, it kept me waiting around.
Of course I worked but gave very little thought to exploring other options when my brush was not in my hand.
“Amour” she sighed. Her eyes were a dark sky from which stars had drifted low to beauty mark her chin. Once again no definitive plans had been made and as I walked home in frustration, I realized that all this time she had not been talking to me but merely echoing the prayer that someone had once recited to the sky.
I had been working hard but still found myself feeling lonely. I was bitten and scratched by this feeling, especially at night when the heat from making dinner required me to open a window and I could hear people passing by down below. I taped a picture of Stravinsky to the refrigerator as in my head it made sense to do so. 
The corner as viewed from the window by my bed. There is a traffic light, the red one; it is the understanding of desolation. I am grateful for that light. No one walks by and even the trees offer only a limited lattice of shadows akin to clarity of thought.
A hymn to solitude.
Sorry, I have this prayer to share but recite another one instead. In the early hours of a new day the street light is crowned with a halo of mist, sainted for all it has witnessed and for always standing alone as all who are holy must do.


Thanksgiving, the local churches were offering their free turkey dinner complete with all the fixings, donated by those in need of assuaging their guilt. Each had a long line spilling out their doors and down the sidewalk. Regardless of the denomination, the queue for each church was comprised of the same people clapping their own shoulders to stay warm. Some talking to themselves others with dull gray blankets thrown over their shoulders looking like extras from a Goya painting.
Not tied in to this but seeming so by coincidence, a long line of cars moving with the traffic light induced stuttered rhythm. Groups of people of varying abilities try to dance a choreography in sync as they exit the city.
Later jaundiced squares of light from apartments which offer no evidence of humanity despite their illumination, intermittently mark the sidewalk. Counterpoint to this light, the dark silhouettes of bushes, their roughhewn edges making them appear as a series of tiny waves frozen at the moment right before breaking upon the pavement. If I could see a cat, even from a distance down the end of the alley, then this night would be perfect. I am drunk off of sweet desolation.


- Wayne H. W Wolfson 2015

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