Out Back By Myself Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

So, when the stresses
and demands
of my small world
beleaguer me,
when silly easements
commandeered by men
in emperor's clothes,
when,
just before the hour
where the night is
at its darkest
and daylight seems
like
an audacious but
a foregone hope,
when lines carved on my face
cannot be persuaded to
return to right side up
position even for
just one small moment,
that is when
I must lie down,
close to the Linden tree out back,
upon the marble cold of yore,
with the nocturnal buzz
of a male Junebug
for dear company
crawling brisk of foot
over my hairy chest,
wishing it were a she bug
and taking comfort in the creaks,
the melodious moans of bark
rubbing against bare bone twigs
arranged as V's just for the nights
of early spring, when sap will rise
and overflow so unobtrusively
reflecting yellow pallor of aged Camembert,
the old Moon caught
with its own
sticky-beak
nose in the shadows
of rust-coloured leaves and
new shoots
dressed in the green of confidence,
I hurt, so deep inside, not seen
by others or
my newly found
and stoic compagnons,
the pain
one sweet emotion
bubbling up to reach
the surface with the will to break
a fragile skin, formed by the lethargy
of smoldering habit destined to remain
a tough coccoon sealed on itself
yet there is happiness,
a light shines
into darkness,
a conquistadore,
and,
before too long the owl arrives,
her wisdom draped around a feathered neck,
her pride expressed in easy grace
and silence in the depth of searching eyes.
My head averts the imminence,
I gaze into the distant stars, Big Bear
blessed by the jolly gods to live
immortal on the Milky Way, he sees
as nothing secret can be kept on earth,
and those who passed before, they know
about my deeds and thoughts,
the self behind the barn and on the bowl,
the time that peers were sought and found
as willing company, the weeds of smoke,
to signal that relief was to be sealed
by symbols of a special kind, they know
and when it's time for me to go I shall,
without a bit of shame use prying eyes
to pass my sneering judgment with great joy...

I sit, the owl has spoken so it seems,
my joints feel free and lightness takes
the place of heavyness within,
it is not often that I hear the song
of melancholy inside my hopeful heart,
it's when you'll find me under all the leaves
of the old Linden tree, out back.
It's where I live again, tied for a time
to the umbilicus of faith inside my soul