He left for it quite a long time ago,
by choice, he said.
who can say whether he is happy or unhappy there
He cares terribly about what he feels
and his emotions are constantly,
even if subtly, changing
He, though, doesn’t feel as though he’s changing along with his emotions;
that is one reason he left to be
alone, on his own island
An island of his own
He writes sometimes
He gives his letters to a strange messenger
who ferries the writing to the world
Those who care for him and his happiness are
always there when his communication appears.
Some of his messages, he specifies,
are not meant for everyone;
others, he continues, are not for you.
I often hear what he has to say,
and sometimes he is speaking only to me.
I don’t think he really
feels the need right now to write to one specific
person, someone who could be his salvation.
He has no such person yet.
Once I wanted to be that needed being, but now
I know it must be someone else. I think I know.
So I still read his writings and wish for
his--
I don’t want to say happiness,
cause maybe he doesn’t want that.
Here. I hope he finds what he’s looking for.
He sits on the beach every sunrise
Sometimes he is glad for the sun
and jogs down the shore, breathing swiftly, laughing quietly.
The seagulls love him and he likes them right back.
The grasses atop his sand dunes
softly wave at the dawn on these mornings
while he tosses himself into the briny drink to
see if the water sounds as handsome
today as it did yesterday.
Such mornings are best spent early,
he says.
The other kind of morning is best unspent
Those traitorous dawns occur
when he does not wish the sun to ever rise again
His despair of the previous night’s meditation
breaks upon him anew as
the thorny rose-fingered sun catches him
from across the dark water of the inky ocean.
Sullenly he watches the nearby star get brighter
and brighter, as he grows darker and darker.
Standing straight with one hint of a defeated slouch;
arms down at his sides;
his hair, spiky and in a tangled mesh swathed
about his head,
he watches, stares, with glittering eyes
and unhappiness in his jaw.
A tear or two falls down his face
to moisten his throat
and he turns, steadily, back to the darker
side of the island.
He thinks always. That is what he left to do,
to think without much interference.
He brought along some finger-paint
some chalk, some water-color
He creates and recreates
everything
that he sees and feels and thinks and hears and smells
and tastes and knows and touches
and can dream about . . .
He does not always keep what he makes
The kept things are safe in a waterproof place
where he sleeps during the rain
Only he knows where he keeps the things he
does not wish to keep, inside
He thinks, he tells me
He thinks about being alone
He is often glad he’s alone,
for then he an do as he pleases with
out fear of being made fun of, with the
truest freedom he can possess
He can be rude to the starfish
and shout profanity in rhyming poetry
to the unyielding night sky
He can spend a week in the nude
just to see what it feels like
He can wear long johns and watch the
sun go down and pretend it is always Tuesday
He can think and say whatever he pleases
He can build elaborate sand castles and
leave them to the high tide’s mercy
He can laugh a thousand laughs; he
can cry a million tears.
He can worry over the blueness of the sky
and raise an abandoned baby sea gull
He can love whomever he wants to love on his island.
He has all this freedom,
he says.
But he may come home someday, he continues.
He is not sure, and neither am I.
Because for all his freedom, he can be lonely.
Once, twice, he wrote me of his loneliness.
He was watching the sunset, cradling a
small crab in his palm, smoothing back
his hair from the strange angles in which the wind blew it.
He thought he heard someone whisper something,
and turned his head and began to speak too.
No one was there, of course; it was his own island.
He was the sole islander, he had to remember.
But he turned to the sunset with a
hollowness in his heart (he says)
and a somber thought in his head.
He pulled the sand with a finger
and made a line.
He liked it, and made another.
He made other lines and drew a word,
the word that was the key to his somber thought.
He wrote to me, once, twice; “Do I have a friend?”
He is right to think about it.
Sometimes he wishes to have someone else with him,
to go swimming with, to tell of a beautiful moment
from his memory, to share his despair and nightmares with,
to hold his hands sometimes.
He wants someone to love.
If I were to be able to write back,
I would tell him to stay where he was,
for even the love he is looking for
cannot be found among people.
Perhaps I am a pessimist;
I often do not have faith when I need it.
So maybe he’ll return,
and then again, perhaps not.
He invited me to come visit his island.
He said there was room for two,
enough food, water, and air.
There is enough space, he continued,
and we could have jolly good fun.
That was a while ago. Now,
as it is, I have not heard much from him.
I wonder about him,
all alone on his own island.
Has he convinced someone to join him?
Has he given up and taken to living alone?
Did he try to come back and lose himself on the way?
I hope he is still there.
I will visit him someday
if I can find where he’s at.
I will do the things with him
that he wanted to do, I will help him search and think,
I will try to help him love someone else;
I will try to be his friend
someday . . .
Perhaps he is still waiting for my answer
and, then again, maybe not.
I think I will go and see.