Every day
At the very same hour
I make my way to Rittenhouse Park
To my personal bench
Where I sit and wait
In a solitary pose,
To collect my thoughts,
Pass my time.
Each day
As I watch,
The people push by--
Trudging forward, with down-cast eyes,
Carrying the burdens of their lives
On weeping shoulders or
In brown leather satchels.
Today
Like other days, and
Like the other plaster statues
sitting on benches,
I am waiting for love and
Filling with loneliness
Like death.
Even now,
I can feel
The red blood of my being
Dripping down from numbed fingers,
Collecting into pools, and
Vanishing
As though I never were.
I can hear
The rushing certainty of time,
The minutes and seconds of this only life,
As they drift away from my soul
like tears,
And evaporate into
the colors of twilight.