Abstinence

Not pain exactly
But a longing, plain for me to see;
A need that has no outward symptom -
None.  Not one.
Brain tristesse invisible and humdrum.
What to do? Is one a freak?
That hour, that day, that week one speaks,
One acts, attends to facts;
A seeking through an abstract dance -
Dependence through aloneness.

Publicity? More company?
Eternity perpetuated through some poetry?
Anyway and somehow, one puts pen to paper.
One, two, three, four hours later,
Crossings out, Webster shouting all the time,
Searching for meaning,
Meaning’s teaching, fetching rhyme:
Through growing phrase and sentence.
Abstinence finds absence.

Writing in that playful way,
One knows one’s had a lot to say.
The silence that gave abstinence;
Was abstinence from muteness.
Abstinence 12.18.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin