How I would trade this cloistered comfort for

A peopled time and space,

Where existence is an immersion

In a crowded embrace;

Where voices banish solipsisms

Of thingy abundance;

Where shared pains and simple joys

Define a transcendence;

Where multiple safety locks do not

Keep strangers from the door,

Or rituals of privacy forbid

Rich human concourse;

Where in hours of distress

I do not reach for numbers

But heal in the baking simmer of

Living human embers.

Alas this unlovely world

Of sequestered convenience,

Where human arms may not reach

Across a policing petulance.

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