Solitude is a Stern Mother

"When one is trifling, even the beauty of the solitary life becomes implacable. Solitude is a stern mother who brooks no nonsense."
– Merton, from "Solitude is a Stern Mother"











Cold is gliding from the sky on a parachute – Brodsky

                                                      V
A few months by encroaching silence
spreads out like clouds over the lake;
those transmitters that once bided their time
inside the hippocampus waiting for escape
now slow to sluggish eels and learn
to live in a lost waters of cold dreams, sleep

a solitude not always friendly to creativity.
She comes in first unawares. Places
a hood over the promise of a wan face.
I'd prefer to love her but don't know how to be.
By deep February I crave the gold limbs
of any tree. I crave sun's contributions.