Loneliness
I have taken to talking to trees
in midwinter; never those at the edges
the safe ones gazing at the highway;
I go deep inside where the snow
is powdery, crystal under light.
We talk, the branches rub together
like insects hissing
the cold calms even my jittery heart;
the silence is absolute here.
Each step I am startled by the hollow
echo of leather on brittle snow.
from Nebraska (University of Nebraska Press, 2019)
I love the book — Nebraska — that this poem is from, a book that uses the setting of Nebraska — which Dawes called home after his birth in Ghana and childhood in Jamaica and parts of adulthood elsewhere — to explore loss, loneliness, death, and more: these stunning and austere themes of winter and isolation. It’s hard, perhaps obviously, for me not to think of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, though this book was actually written in Nebraska, while Springsteen’s seminal album — one of my favorites — was recorded on a four-track in Colts Neck, New Jersey. It haunts, though, Springsteen’s album. The whole thing. I think often about how two songs — “Open All Night” and “State Trooper” — end with the same line, which is a kind of plea, a prayer:
deliver me from nowhere
And I feel that same haunted quality throughout Dawes’ book. One poem, “The Barking Geese of Edenton,” ends with these two lines:
Sure, we will die, each of us, this is
the truth. I study our faces like one studies the dead.
In another poem, “Before Winter,” which is absolutely remarkable, Dawes begins:
I imagine there is a place of deep rest—not in the resting but after,
when the body has forgotten the weight of fatigue or of its manybetrayals—how unfair that once I thought it clever to blame my body
for the wounds in me: the ankle bulbous and aching, the heavinessin the thigh, and the fat, the encroachment of flesh.
Later in the poem, he writes:
I am losing myself to the shelter we build to beat back
sorrow and the weight of our fears.
I feel, in that poem and in today’s poem, a desire to move away from the trappings of the world-at-large. A desire that manifests itself as a need to “talk to trees,” to imagine “a place of deep rest,” to recognize the ways in which we are losing ourselves — even in shelter. And maybe that’s why I’m turning to today’s poem. It’s beginning to be that time of year when every day grows a little colder, when I start with one jacket, and then layer a sweater under. Now, when I get my coffee from the small diner under the train on my way to teach, I drink it quicker, cherishing even more that scalding burn at the back of my throat. It feels dark at all times. I check my watch, thinking it is always later than it is. It’s always dark, so dark. But it’s never as late as it feels. Maybe that should be a call for hope.
Such a seasonal feeling reminds me of the ending of Dawes’ poem “Transplant,” which reads:
It grows dark quickly here,
and God no longer strolls
the gardens, calling out
the name of things with delight;
not even the damp clump
of a name. These days, I must
learn the names of grasses,
shrubs, and the stunted flowers.
A time with no names is a time of loneliness. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt defines loneliness as “a situation in which I as a person feel myself deserted by all human companionship.” It’s hard not to think of that line when you come across the opening lines of today’s poem:
I have taken to talking to trees
in midwinter; never those at the edges
the safe ones gazing at the highway;I go deep inside where the snow
is powdery, crystal under light.
I love the movement here. The opening line establishes the stakes of the speaker’s loneliness. It’s the kind of loneliness that, as Arendt defines it, comes from no longer feeling wanted or needed or heard or supported or in communion with humans. But from there, Dawes pushes the experience of loneliness even deeper, in particularly spatial terms. His speaker doesn’t just want to talk to any tree; he wants to talk to the ones “deep inside,” away from the edges — those places where nature meets humanity.
The speaker of today’s poem craves a certain stillness, too, I imagine. Craves a silence that is “absolute.” Today, as I was reading Adam Ehrlich Sachs’ The Organs of Sense, I came across this line:
The true thinkers are standing utterly still in a very complicated way.
I love that. This notion that stillness allows for complication, that it beckons listening, which is its own complicated act. Not complicated as an action, but complicated by virtue of what it might allow for — what newness, what joy. It’s a stillness we don’t often find within the boundaries of our world, where so much pushes away at stillness, and constrains us in something other than what stillness might allow for.
Throughout this short poem, Dawes seems even to play with that very notion of human-based constraints. There are moments of missing punctuation, these ends of lines where a period or a comma might suffice, but Dawes leaves them out, as if slowly and awkwardly trying to shake off the binds of humanness — the commas that signal pauses, the periods that signal stops. But then the punctuation returns, and you feel the poem back in the world again. Maybe no longer in the world of nature, no, but rather in the world of society-at-large. The world of imposed order, rationality. I love that playfulness, that attempt at enacting loneliness as a kind of in-between-ness: wanting to be both in the world and out of it at the same time.
And I also understand that, though a poem can be a kind of play — with grammar, punctuation, style, structure, and more — it can also signal something tragic unfolding, both within the poem and within the world. And I feel that in Dawes’ poem. The tragedy of needing to retreat from the world, not just to the boundary of human development, but deeper inside, so far away that you are “startled.” The tragedy, too, of needing a ceaseless, bitter cold to calm a “jittery heart.” The tragedy of a jittery heart in the first place. The tragedy of loneliness. The tragedy of seeking solace so far away from the companionship of others.
But such a tragedy is a tragedy worth exploring. Recently, I finished Max Porter’s Lanny, a tender and mythical novel about a this playful, witty, wildly wise boy who has this deep communion with nature. In it, Lanny’s mother is described as:
The type of person who is that little bit more akin to the weather than most people, more obviously made of the same atoms as the earth than most people these days seem to be.
How beautiful is that? What a lovely description, to refer to someone as a little bit more akin to the weather. It makes me consider the ways in which so much of how we interact with the world has to do with control rather than akin-ness. To be akin to something means, almost literally, to be like family — to be among it, related to it, responsive to it. And though families are not often the best example of this kind of gracious and generous idea of relationship, kinship at its heart is still a model of something beautiful. And I feel that longing for kinship in today’s poem. And I feel that tragic, but important truth, too: that so often we do not find the kinship we long for among humans, so we go looking for it somewhere else.
And it is in that somewhere else where we find models of interacting with the world that are beautiful. It’s why I love the fact that this poem ends with “brittle snow” — I hear in that description not a disrespect, but rather a genuine love and appreciation for the fragility of nature. Dawes’ speaker is “startled” by such fragility, and it’s funny, because I too am startled by vulnerable expressions of fragility in this life. I shouldn’t be, I know. But I often find that my loneliness — when it comes — comes from not encountering in others what I view as truths of this life: fragility, brokenness, admissions of vulnerability. I wonder if Dawes’ speaker is startled by the brittle fragility of snow because he has not encountered the admission of such fragility in humans, even though such fragility is one of the facts of existence. So often, we hide our vulnerabilities from the world, or are taught to be forever in a state of betterment, as if our various fragile qualities weren’t things to be listened to and cherished. The speaker in Dawes’ poem wanders deeper into nature to find the gentle kindness of brokenness, the way, sometimes, it is a beautiful thing to admit how vulnerable we are. The way it breaks my heart and fills it at the same time.
Perhaps it’s an odd thing to find in brokenness a kind of solidarity, but I think that is where most solidarity exists. If loneliness occurs, as Arendt says, in the aftermath of human desertion, then it’s perhaps possible to argue that such desertion is the result of a refusal to acknowledge brokenness, or deal with it, or extend grace toward it. I think we do this with ourselves all the time. I certainly do. I struggle to admit my own fragility. And I think we — tired as we are with ourselves — grow tired with others, too. What loneliness prevails in the wake of this? So much, I imagine. So much.
I can’t help but think of the recent and joyous news of the Starbucks workers successfully organizing to form a union at a location in Buffalo. I was struck, a little sadly, by something Casey Moore — one of the workers — was quoted as saying in a recent article:
Every single day was us learning about how difficult it is to form a union in this country and just the odds against us are incredibly insurmountable.
What a lonely moment in this world, that those who are trying to find communion have the odds stacked against them. That those who are simply trying to advocate for some sense of community — to organize themselves against a system that feels at once so vast and oppressive and yet specifically geared to burden each individual life — are met with deep resistance. That people have to do so much, and overcome so much, just so they are not alone.
No wonder, as Kwame Dawes writes in today’s poem, that we are sometimes more willing to leave it all and talk to trees. Perhaps the only hope is that the trees might offer us something wonderful. I think I’ve quoted this passage from Richard Powers’ The Overstory before, but I’ll quote it again:
We found that trees could communicate, over the air and through their roots. Common sense hooted us down. We found that trees take care of each other. Collective science dismissed the idea. Outsiders discovered how seeds remember the seasons of their childhood and set buds accordingly. Outsiders discovered that trees sense the presence of other nearby life. That a tree learns to save water. That trees feed their young and synchronize their masts and bank resources and warn kin and send out signals to wasps to come and save them from attacks.
I forget so often these days. I never remember. I spend and hardly save. How wonderful it would be — don’t you think? — to call oneself a part of a forest. It sounds so beautiful. The kinship at the heart of such connection. The real kinship.
Kwame Dawes' "Loneliness"
this is really beautiful and was a really lovely way to spend time reflecting on the branches outside my own window, and the feelings of kinship we find with others, including other animals. I'll be taking that idea with me today as I read and write. Thank you.
"How wonderful it would be — don’t you think? — to call oneself a part of a forest. It sounds so beautiful. The kinship at the heart of such connection. The real kinship."
I've been working to raise mutual aid to create care/hygiene kits for unhoused neighbors in my community and this resonates so deeply. Thank you so much.