Like Normal People

Noon. Sun at its most bleaching. Eyes squinting.
You are not the first to walk the beaches this morning,
but at this hour, you are the only one there.

The loneliness suits you fine. Sand between your toes.
The early May sun on your skin. A brief and fickle wind.
You walk.

You are out of the habit of solitude and it takes time
to let the voices in your head evaporate. Time
and miles. Two days later your legs are still sore.

You collect stones. Small, rounded white ones
tossed up by the tides. Each one a symbol, a talisman
of other trips here. Years of them. One for each journey.

And there have been many. Year after year you return
in the off season. To walk. To sit. To mean nothing
to anyone but yourself, at least for a day or few.

There is perhaps something wrong with you,
that things pile up and at a certain point
you must get away or unravel.

It is not a thing you can measure, this healing.
You cannot say “it happened here” or “it happened there.”
It happens when you stop thinking about it,

when you can live, uninterrupted, unneeded, invisible
for a time. And then for a time longer. Long enough
your shins ache. Long enough you cease to think

You were taught to think. But you were not taught
how to feel and so it still comes slowly,
builds up, this stew of love and anger and fire,

playful, anxious, lost, layers of fear, layers of hope,
persistence, shame, pride, a need to dance,
provoked (in good and bad ways), vulnerability,

a long list that gets lost in the thinking,
in the day to day, in the needs of others.
It is hard enough to feel. You don’t know

how others do it, day in and day out,
feel, identify those feelings, live them out,
all in a millisecond. Like normal people.

But you need this. Quiet. Solitude,
Time with the sun. Walking. Sitting.
Meals alone. Time to let you catch up, sort out,

put the emotions in their place and let the rest
go. Walk, not to a destination
but to emptiness. Mind and heart no longer at war.

You sit in the sun. Just a while longer.
to make sure you are empty enough
to go back where you are not invisible,

and to do the work
you were meant to do.

About this poem.

Just back from a trip to Cape Cod.

I love my work and love my life, but at times, once or twice a year, I need to get away from both. And just be. Me.

Tom