Solitude is difficult

I decided that one line of this poem from my last post was simply not enough. Here you are:

Finally will it not be enough,
after much living, after
much love, after much dying
of those you have loved,
to sit on the porch near sundown
with your eyes simply open,
watching the wind shape the clouds
into the shapes of clouds?

Even then you will remember
the history of love, shaped
in the shapes of flesh, everchanging
as the clouds that pass, the blessed
yearning of body for body,
unending light.
You will remember, watching
the clouds, the future of love.


I also decided that one Rilke quote was not enough. So...

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.


_________

Yesterday I practiced solitude; I got lunch at the Den and took it outside. The best way I have found to make myself remember my smallness is to watch the clouds over the Blue Ridge mountains. It is good, I think, to be silent and still every now and then. It gives me the chance to hear myself.