I’ve figured out how to be mostly alone, left alone, as in that’s how I want it

—You know that moment when you’ve left someone, 

even knowing you could stay with him and it could work, 

and there’s no one else, nothing like that, still you don’t 

go back, is that what’s meant by free will, or is that 

fate—what it’s been, 

all along? Sometimes—even here, 

in what I hope is the early part, still, of the second half 

of my statistical life, where I’ve figured out how to be 

mostly alone, left alone, as in that’s how I want it—it’s 

         as if I’ve let myself down, which only has to mean 

I’ve expected too much of myself—“of,” not “for”; about 

that much, I think I’m still quite clear. Likewise, 

like being told to write a love poem without images or 

maybe two exceptions 

can seem the only way I’ve known how to love a person, 

but that makes it sound like a bad thing. That 

can’t be right … At this time of year, the best light arrives 

just before nightfall. It’s when the trees seem most 

            what they’ve always been: trees not questioning 

their necessarily unpersuadable selves, trees beneath 

which, after storms especially, I find the occasional 

downed bird, dead or, more difficult, still dying. Who can 

say what it counts for, but I believe 

not nothing. That I’ve rested my head 

on the ground beside it. That in 

what was left of the light I sang to it. Hush now. 

You’re not the first piece of gentleness to have crossed this hand. 

 

[Carl Phillips, 'Barbarian', from Poetry Daily]