Sometimes you can only walk alone.
Even when, at the point of the path that in the winter meets
the frozen water, the ravens croak, as if to you. And the way is so clear, and
the sun is obliging, making the whole set sparkle (the dry goldenrod are of
course encased in ice), and when you stop there is no sound. Not even your
breath.
Even then, you cannot turn to anyone else to say ‘look, look
at this! Look at this place I have come, look how the world has swelled around
me.’ No one can stand behind your eyes. (Please do not take a picture; where is
your heartbeat? The groaning ice? The stillness?)
And because, also, this would not happen. Footsteps in the
crusty snow are so loud, they are a wild racket, and when you stop the other who
has come with you generally won’t stop exactly then, the ravens' croaks will be
off, muffled by another’s crunching walk. (Someone with four paws can come,
perhaps, who senses before even you when you will stop, who in fact lives in
sense and so cannot interrupt it).
And there is a world between people, especially the ones you
love the most, and it cannot be set aside. Ribbons of life infused with care
and history and hope circle between you, color the space surrounding you,
divide your loving attention (this is nothing terrible, but lovely and its own
Thing). A living, breathing inter-life comes with you, and in the still strung
winter it is as raucous as an orchestra. Here you can marvel, only differently.
Sometimes you can only walk alone, and you must sharply,
sweetly understand that no one else can stand behind your eyes.
