December 14: Philip Levine, "Alone"

Saint Marty doesn't have a lot of energy to be witty or profound tonight.  All he has is a poem by Phil Levine on this lonely night.

Alone

Sunset, and the olive grove flames
on the far hill.  We descend
into the lunging shadows
of goat grass, and the air

deepens like smoke.
You were behind me, but when I turned
there was the wrangling of crows
and the long grass rising in the wind

and the swelling tips of grain
turning to water under a black sky.
All around me the thousand
small denials of the day

rose like insects to the flaming
of an old truth, someone alone
following a broken trail of stones
toward the deep and starless river.