Loneliness
by Lori Hershberger
So long now have I walked with loneliness
I remember not when he first walked with me:
Silent along the avenues of all the arching years,
On roads straight through sunlit fields and rows of maples,
And crooked and dark among mountain heights that draw us on, together.
I cannot fathom my companion of the decades;
I only know:
A grim solace not all unwelcome,
A song unsung, a word unspoken—
The echo of memories unlived.
Lori Hershberger is a Kansas farm girl who lives and teaches in the hills of Mae Hong Son, Thailand and loves words, languages, cats, rivers, mountains, cookies and—well, just about everything.
Photography by Kenneth Godoy