Wednesday, April 30, 2014

The Oldest Human Need

How far removed are you from loneliness?       
Would it be two relationships or three,
or is it one that holds your homeliness;
just one, thin soul to form the boundary?

Like spinning yarn our family and friends
become entwined, their lives enriching ours,
but when a strand unravels from, or rends
the whole we find ourselves with empty hours.

What insulates you from the vast alone
that tears through thoughts like clawing arctic wind,
its piercing cold, its heartless, raking  moan
that shakes and isolates the thickest skinned?

We don’t all need a child or a mate,
just someone who will wonder if we’re late.


One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.  -Margaret Mead  


Here is a sonnet, of sorts, for the final day of 30 days of poetry for the month of April. Woo Hoo!  

11 comments:

  1. Congratulations for your accomplishment and yes we all need someone special in our life.

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  2. This one really tugged at me. . . such a great write. Even the thick skinned aren't immune to loneliness.

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  3. But what if you are never late?

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  4. just lovely, thanks for sharing

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  5. beautiful, Mary. You wrote a great month of poems!

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  6. i think we all want to know someone cares...that someone knows our name...and will miss us if we are gone....

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  7. Oh, well done Mary. ~

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  8. Oh, what a wonderful piece. Loved it. Yes, we all need that companion who will wreck their brains trying to figure out where we are. Many thanks.

    Greetings from London.

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  9. This is just beautiful. Lovely to read metrical, rhymed poetry in a recognised form. But can you jig line 13 which (unluckily haha!) has only 9 sylls - in my UK pronunciation. And in the last line could/should the "if" be "why."?
    I dunno if I want to read the other 29. After this little miracle, I might feel disappointed.

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  10. LTTP Mary, but glad I made it. These are questions I often ponder as my world, with age, grows smaller. Your last lines say it all. Congrats on making it through the longest April in recorded history.

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  11. Beautiful poem-a pleasure to read. Wish you all the best always.

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