Who is This Poem Talking to?

M. Travis Lane
From: The All-Nighter's Radio (Guernica, 2010)

The lyric, speaking in solitude,
speaks to another solitude.
We have our outer selves, our names
(the dog knows I mean him, and not the cat).
Who are we when we are alone?

Ten years from home, in hospital,
I knew those footsteps in the hall.
"Mommy," said my baby heart.
I think it's love
that makes us know our loneliness.
Our sense of self
requires an other who is gone
yet present in the instinct of our soul.
It is that loss
that calls me to my self.

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M. Travis Lane's works copyright © to the author.