Energy and the Lack Thereof

You remember when you could touch the stones.
Walk right up to them and understand their massiveness
in a way that only happens when you are close,
seeing their texture, even chisel marks,
feel their ponderance, their weight, and their energy.
You could know them as they were meant to be known,
not as tourist markers a hundred yards away,
no bigger than a postcard, and just as unequal
to the task of awe.

You sit a while, remembering the closeness of past journeys,
here and with people who now feel as far as foreign,
their dimension and energy roped off from you now
and always, nothing more than a picture
and a memory, and you are left wondering
if you ever lived in that closeness,
or if you were a tourist all along,
unaware.

About this poem

Regular readers will get the tourist reference. There are, in travels and life, people who rush through, seeing as much as possible, but not deeply. None of it sinks in.

I love Stonehenge. I am glad I am old enough to have gone there when you could walk among the stones, touch them, feel them in your bones. No longer.

I sometimes, not always, feel the energy of a place. I almost always feel the energy of a person. It’s a good thing, and I am always startled when I feel nothing from a person or place.

From all that, this poem.

Tom