Now You Know

What does it feel like? I'll tell you what it feels like!

Leaning against the frigid, cutting wind,
Fending off the stinging of the icy rain
That nips at you like a swarm of angry insects.

You cover your face as best you can,
Trying to look into the wind and down the road
From whence shall come your respite.

Slowly the cold consumes the feeling from your feet.
As you lower your hand from your face to check the time
The stinging swarm of icy raindrops resumes the attack.

In the distance the headlights cut through the shroud.
Soon you will be wrapped in sweet, warmth,
Safe from the slicing, numbing cold.

As the tail lights vanish into the freezing rain,
You tell yourself the next car will be the one you await
But it is not, nor the next or the next. Still you wait.

Now you know my loneliness.

Reviews

[Barbara G, Emerging Sou..]

Funny how reading something can transform time and take you back to a place and a memory. This instantly brought to mind how I used to wait in my bedroom when I was a teenager, standing next to the window, my eyes searching for his headlights as I waitied for him to come and pick me up and take me away. Every car that passed and every minute that ticked by just made the waiting all that much more important, in some way...

And then the instant one of the pair of lights would slow to turn into my driveway, I would be running out of my room and down the hallway and out the door so that he wouldn't have to wait for me even one fraction of a minute, because I knew that he hated to be kept waiting...

It didn't matter that I had stood and waited, sometimes for an hour or more...I couldn't make HIM wait even 30 seconds...didn't want to give him any ammunition for discord...

Don't you wonder how things evolve that way, sometimes? Or why?

I do...

[Tai Chi Italy]

I would add that you capture a hopelessness here along with loneliness. This poem takes you places you don't want to go! Brilliantly described. I see, I've read you in the past. Good to meet your work again. Smiling through the darkness, Tai

[Creepy Swine Guy]

Thank you Ma'am.

[Doreen]

I physically felt this as I read it. The last line cut through my heart like a razor.

[Nancy Lee Shrader]

Congrats on your great winning poem!

[Blade & Blood (The ..]

Wow, not once did you mention someone's heart. lol I guess I associate it with the heart a little too much because that's definitely where I feel it. This is a very beautiful poem. :) Full of vague emotion, yet detailed depth. Very well-done!

Ironically Yours, Blade and Blood

[Brenda Sue]

I could be the loneliness and the bitter cold. Wonderfully penned. Great job.

[Blackbirdsong]

Well this was a heart wrenching read. I could feel all that bitter cold you describe along with the loneliness of waiting for someone who is never going to come. Wonderfully written Jerry.

[Emily B]

Chilling is too cliche a thing to say about your poem, Jerry. I think I've been on that road. Waiting. Watching. Hoping. 'I see the lights of the village gleam through the rain and the mist And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me that my soul cannot resist.'

Sorry. Sometimes the words from my past spill over. Especially when I'm tired. This is beautiful. I was so excited to open it. The first thing I've chosen to read for a long time--just for me. Because I wanted to, without worry about what I ought to be reading instead . . . I'm looking forward to more of that.

[Debra Stevens Edwards (..]

This piece is wonderfully done. I can feel the biting driving rain and the hoplessness as each car
passes by. My heart and my friendship. lonliness is a sad thing. I feel the chill in my bones and
the lonliness in my soul.
Debby

[Chase Alexander]

At the end of this poem, it just seems like this is a magnificently poetic and beautifully exagerrated way to describe someone waiting for their ride to pick them up in a blizzard.

Interesting...

-Chase Alexander

[Siobhan MacIntyre]

Now THIS, Jerry, is your signature poem. This is where, as I said in mine, you "open a vein and let emotion flow". This shows your true essence. Not that you're depressed or lonely; that's an aside issue. Who you truly are, how you truly feel, is in this poem.