THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: "Uncertain Sequences" (poem)

UNCERTAIN SEQUENCES
by  Barry Casselman

The sudden arrival of solitude was a surprise attack
on our apathies about each other.

We had harbored no doubts about the daily course
of the world we passed through in numb routine
as if we were winter birds flying south
or gestating salmon going upstream.

Now we wonder what course is next
after intrusion is somehow subdued.    

We call the future with  numbers discerned by our own decoders,
but the future only answers by asking us to record a message.            

In almost every score of years, an abrupt flash point occurs,  
reminding us how fragile we are, how little we know
what we think we know about.

Solitude uncloaks a condition we are compelled
then to clothe with other solitaries to warm our passage
through the unheated space of our planet’s wordless orbit.
We invented dress codes we call languages
to connect to the other ones, those we can reach.

Days of unexpected solitude are in andante tempo,
and unless we improvise, they play the same songs,
the same songs from old dreams we did not understand.

We compose new melodies in vivace as a way out of this.

The next season wakes us again.


Copyright (c) 2020 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.