The Hermit

The Phone.
Do I want to go out? To a movie perhaps?
Leave here? Go somewhere?

But today is so special.
Tonight I am here.
There is nobody here tonight.

What do I want to do?
What am I doing?
What more could I do?

I turn out all the lights in the house,
Switch off the TV and radio if they’re on,
Turn it all off and just sit there waiting.

Waiting for dark.
Looking at the sky in it’s crimson glory at twilight.
Gazing up at Venus as it pops into the air.

I take a chair out beyond the garden and sit there.
I sit there in the cooling air,
Watching the dark arise in the east.

Sitting in the balmy blue under a wan moon
That washes filtered light across a polaroid landscape.
Cooling off in the night sun,
Watching the lights of a town twinkle in the thick air,
Dreaming of reaching up to the stars with my hand
And picking out the one that I fancy,
Then place it on a necklace or ring and give it to one I love
So it gleams through the dark and vanishes under yellow day.

Then I sing a song that’s in my mind.
And sing until the songs are done.
Then I know I am cold and alone.
So I take the chair into the house and turn on a dim light
And sit and wait for the sun to rise, thinking of a star.

The Day.
Sun through the clouds in beams of hazy love.
Birds in a birdbath, cuddling, quivering.
Frosty ice on composting grass, crackling under the feet.
House on the land, upright, stunted, sharp.

Song in my mind, gracious in its calling,
Set my mind at rhythm, thinking of a star.

Zephyr flutter, a leaf falls.

Autumn. Falling of leaves, curling of a flower.
Cold pulse of a reptile lying in hidden trace.
Cold hard seat resting in a garden-
Staring upwards, waiting.

Eyes, searching, staring.
The Phone. The TV. The Radio.
Dormant.
The house. The trees. The birds in splashing song.
Window of the mind,
In hue of Earth and Sky and Air and Sea,
Waiting to call, to hear, to see.

Loving in slow motion, glazed and smudged with time,
The giant Eye of God stares down eternally.