Alone.

Alone is a snow park somewhere in Sweden

It operates at night and there is always a decent crowd

It’s the type of place you meet your Ex’s sister -

now short-haired and sex-changed. She’s sad for a moment

but then continues her trot though the park with the energy

of a young boy (rumor there’s a reality show with producers in the wings)

At the top of the hill (and feeding all the runs) are lines of various

Futures and pasts all colliding in the new middle of Alone.

There were two kids snowballed up from standing too long

In the drift, out of nowhere they got a push and were headed down

Apparently, you can’t doff your pack in Alone, you must keep moving.

I left alone with a grin, for me it was more of a stumble through an

Off-Broadway show where no one cared to take my ticket.

Looking back, Alone was like a tinted, home film menagerie;

played on me by my stuck mind, which was struggling for rest

And running out of road…something that needed to be let go.

Maybe it was the odd European guy we asked for directions at the Met

Trying to find our long-lost tour group, I asked him to point us to

“The Death of Socrates,” and, with that faint look of irritation and

dash of mistrust, “taken down a few days ago” was all we got.

I grinned because in the end, he was wrong, the painting was still up,

The tour group was found and the story of the Hemlock was told.

After my short visit to Alone I am concluding that it is the opposite place of lonely.

Surrounded by all the people who could share a sleigh or hold your hand,

You just have no desire to return the favor.

Left unaccompanied, all these people still cascade down lamp-lit toboggan trails

Without you, and frolic in little red houses at the bottom of the run.

The echoes of their romp somehow always muffled by sepia-tone snow.