Pockets of Solitude, by Jennifer Angelina Petro

Pockets of Solitude

By

Jennifer Angelina Petro

 

 

It’s easy to close your eyes

Surrounded by such stillness,

And the light from bright windows

Beyond which the day busies itself

With so many purposeful things to do.

 

It’s easy to stand in the middle of the living room

And become a winter tree, draped with a shawl

Of silence.

 

It’s easy to slip away into pockets of solitude

Where the keys to doors drifting away

Become little bird bones of a life lost

To a childhood of summer breezes filled

With fear.

 

It’s easy to let the quiet become your body,

To become as a cup in a cupboard,

A microscope in a dark closet, hunched over,

Like a monk studying spirals on vellum leaves.

 

It’s easy to never wish again, to can’t help

But noticing how fragile you are, fragile

And yet primed to become a leviathan

In the sea of your own life.