Solitude
A poem by Maggie Rosen

Solitude

“You have raised three lonely children.”
(My father to my mother in a fight, circa 1980)

If there were a way to raise a child to loneliness,
my mother probably could have done it.
But that was not her intent.
She was practiced, skilled in nurturing solitude.

Happiest:
Between drop off and pick up.
Before laundry and after cooking.
As the baby napped.

She was not sure she wanted children.
She never craved an audience.
Smoking a cigarette while rocking on the back porch,
she would encourage us to go somewhere else. “Where’s your brother?”

She would never want us to feel rejection,
lose love –
divorce devastated her.
But she was fine if we spent the day wandering about without any company.
There are bigger tragedies.

She showed us how to see the multitudes within:
Open a book, write a letter, listen to Handel.

Lonely? You needed to ride your bike to the woods, prop it against
an oak, get a foothold and lift up.
Lonely? Find some solitude.

About the Author:

Maggie Rosen lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. Her poems have been published in Little Patuxent Review, Waccamaw, Cider Press Review, RiverLit, Blood Lotus, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Barely South, and Conclave, among other publications. A poetry chapbook, The Deliberate Speed of Ghosts, was published in 2016 by Red Bird Chapbooks. See more about her work at maggierosen.com. 

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