The paradox of felt isolation in crowds.

[rednickel]

I've been trying to re-work an old poem of mine:

Christmas Party, Paths to Nowhere

I remember the winter night I finally lost it,
slipping past the gathered noise to wander
as a pseudonym through half-familiar streets;

to crumble, collapse on a stranger’s lawn
with the stale menthol afterthought of too much
vodka burning its own path through my nose.

And I remember how the street-lit fog made
the sway of long widowed apple trees seem
even more skeletal; their elegiac dance tipped

my senses over and, soothed by a drunken gravity,
I lowered my ear to the snow - envying the
quiet consciousness of melting away

and wondering if it could be learned by listening.
Suddenly, a loud stranger shook me upright
and I stumbled back across the street, stamping

the ghost-glitter of untracked snow to a
dark pulp, thinking: I always manage to find
a different path back to these same empty houses,

full of people.