My Crowded Solitude

My Crowded Solitude

The night drags slowly

deeper into darkness and cold

in this house empty of you –

all of you, my family of the dead.

That lovely man, my husband.

The cats who began as kittens,

whom we called ‘the children’

even as they grew old along with us.

And then the singular cat,

unexpected treasure of my life,

who came to be my companion 

late, after all the others had gone.

Now she too has left me. 

In the house of the spirits, I wander

cheerless, purposeless, stranger

in a strange land I used to call home. 

Adrift in the strange land alone –

weeping, as the prophet said,

for that which has been my delight –

I begin to resurrect you from shadows.

Selene lying at my feet of an evening;

Levi’s funny little chirruping miaow; Freya 

coming to meet me across the lawn; Andrew 

holding me, saying, ‘We’ll get through this’.

And we did get through it, and here I am

out the other side with all my memories

of love growing stronger and stronger,

asking myself: What is it all but luminous?

For Day 13 of Poems in April at 'imaginary garden with real toads' we are asked to incorporate three book titles into our poem – titles containing at least three words, which we must not rearrange or delete.

My books are The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, and What Is It All but Luminous? by Art Garfunkel. As I was writing, I realised I wanted a fourth book title as the title of the poem: My Crowded Solitude by Jack McLaren.