there is a solitude beneath
street lamps and through
novembers that are anonymous
as abandonment whose elements
are through many places
once cherished, and many faces
once beloved, though
there is a time for loneliness
in the human life cycle
a time to get stronger when alone
just to know that there are no
permanent realization, even love
can be taken away at any moment
we ask for what means most
and have it taken away
I wanted the river to go on
flowing the same way, and somewhere
in wanting to possess
I lost the thing I most valued
among many other stories
in the city, death cries slowly
in the long years that drag
in our prodigal decline we
might summarize all we ever thought
in a flash of voices, in a
gesture that meant everything
and nothing, that everything
was symbolic, even the perennial
lessons in experience, mere afterthoughts
like the snow that softens moments
after it hits the pavement
the pavement that belongs to nobody
that snow that belongs to all.
Wuji Seshat 