Objection

by LESLIE ULLMAN

Loneliness is a black eye, a gleaming pit.
—after Eduardo C. Corral

A clear stream runs through me when I’m alone. Alone-ness. Not black. Not pit.

Alone-ness opens inside/outside, a two-sided flower.

Threads of it can be woven through traffic, press of appointments, sunlight
glaring off glass and brick.

Alone-ness at dusk rides the brush of fragile wings. Luna moth? Monarch?

And breezes that lift the fur of fox and racoon…

Sometimes alone-ness settles over my head like a veil—not wedding, not mourning.

Allows mystery to graze me.

I salt my alone-ness with small questions.

To bring out its flavors.

One can let alone-ness out at night to roam the hushed grasses and meet the jeweled eyes
of creatures never tamed. It always returns.

Crows pluck bits of alone-ness and hide them. Glitter-hoards.

Is it alone-ness that sneaks a stalk of chive into the pot of dianthus?

Seeds strands of vinca, little gifts, from pot to garden?

Alone-ness is connotative, untranslatable.

Eduardo, under your roof of loneliness, alone-ness opens me.