During my week in the Yolla Bolly Wilderness last month I encountered a stillness of mind and peace of spirit unlike I’ve ever experienced before. I’ve only twice before gone more than three days without coming across another human being, both of which were on the Yukon River. And I found these two experiences extremely disconcerting. Clearly I wasn’t ready to make peace with Solitude.

To make peace with her I’ve had to—not reconcile myself to a life without intimate companionship—but accept that it’s a very real possibility. Accept that maybe it’s not the most important thing in my life, not so essential to my health and wellbeing. And when I met Solitude a third time in the wilderness, this time backpacking, I found her not so repulsive, not so unfriendly. In fact, I found her energy quite feminine in nature, and comforting, accepting.

Solitude

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

This poem has taken me a month to write because I felt it so important to take my “self” completely out of the poem, and to make only pronominal references to Solitude herself. This stretched me to find other ways of wording a journey and expressing the development of a closeness between the spirits of two beings, one an embodied entity, the other an immaterial principle.

Poems like this represent what I strive toward as an animist poet.