Together Alone Poem by Mike Smith

More so now than ever before I am truly on my own
Not lonely or abandoned
Not somehow yearning for more interaction or attention
Just that, I am by myself
Lone Ranger

And that solitude,
While not altogether unfamiliar
Is something I've not yet experienced in such volume
Such continuity and concordance

It does me good I think
To sit in the silence of myself and to wonder
To remember or to speculate
To revel in the good times or mourn the bad
I find myself more in tune with my surroundings
More aware of situations
More attentive to my instincts
More appreciative of my place and status
More willing to be spontaneous
More hesitant to be reluctant
More honest
More free
More me

More determined to make the most of... Of...
Of everything, I suppose
To capture each moment
Each thought
Each feeling
Each up and down
Each sunrise and sunset
Each success and each failure
Each second spent learning
And each lesson taught
Each sound heard
Each song played
Each conversation spoken
Each interaction had
Each beauty witnessed
Each promise made
Each tragedy or miracle
Each good fortune and each loss
Each move forward
Each regression
... But even more than those
Each breath
Each second of life!

In our feeble understanding of this universe we inhabit
Life is perhaps the rarest commodity in existence
And I was given one
A life
All for me
To do with what I please
To waste it would be not only a shame, but a crime

And the sentence for such a severe lack of reverence and gratitude
It's not necessarily a harsh one
It's certainly easy enough to take life for granted
To accept it as a reality that has always been present

But life
Life,
Living, growing, consuming, reproducing organisms
Life, is one thing we have still not found outside our blue and green ball in space.

We have proof of black holes
Of supernovas
Of countless other galaxies harboring even further countless stars, planets, moons, comets and other space matter
We have witnessed the results of two black holes colliding
We have charted the routes of comets for centuries
We have named thousands upon thousands of stars and planets inside the Milky Way
But we have no answer, no equivalent, no counterpart and no comparison to this 'life experiment' taking place right here in our backyards day after day
For all our research and projections
For all our science and conclusions
For all our math and logic
For all our imagination and wishful thinking
We still don't know whether we are the product of fluke chance or that of utter inevitability