Now You Know

What does it feel like? I'll tell you what it feels like!

Leaning against the frigid, cutting wind,
Fending off the stinging of the icy rain
That nips at you like a swarm of angry insects.

You cover your face as best you can,
Trying to look into the wind and down the road
From whence shall come your respite.

Slowly the cold consumes the feeling from your feet.
As you lower your hand from your face to check the time
The stinging swarm of icy raindrops resumes the attack.

In the distance the headlights cut through the shroud.
Soon you will be wrapped in sweet, warmth,
Safe from the slicing, numbing cold.

As the tail lights vanish into the freezing rain,
You tell yourself the next car will be the one you await
But it is not, nor the next or the next. Still you wait.

Now you know my loneliness.

Reviews

[Barbara G, Emerging Sou..]

Funny how reading something can transform time and take you back to a place and a memory. This instantly brought to mind how I used to wait in my bedroom when I was a teenager, standing next to the window, my eyes searching for his headlights as I waitied for him to come and pick me up and take me away. Every car that passed and every minute that ticked by just made the waiting all that much more important, in some way...

And then the instant one of the pair of lights would slow to turn into my driveway, I would be running out of my room and down the hallway and out the door so that he wouldn't have to wait for me even one fraction of a minute, because I knew that he hated to be kept waiting...

It didn't matter that I had stood and waited, sometimes for an hour or more...I couldn't make HIM wait even 30 seconds...didn't want to give him any ammunition for discord...

Don't you wonder how things evolve that way, sometimes? Or why?

I do...

[Sandra Cooper]

Sometimes experiencing the bitter sting of cold and the pangs of waiting and feeling lonely help to appreciate and celebrate the one who will stop...I enjoyed this poem- and could relate.Well written Jerry,San

[Mary Maston]

you description of the cold was very well done. The poem as a whole was very well written. Those who have left reviews seem to agree with me that you do a great job of taking the reader into that moment of near hypothermic impatience. What threw me was the last line and the title. This poem is not about loneliness, it's about desperation. I have been where the subject of your poem is many, many times. I was never lonely. Something is missing from this poem to make the reader feel lonely. Perhaps a longing for the specific person, some kind of emotional attachment that extends beyond simply needing to replace the cold with warmth. If this poem were mine, I would either change that last line and title (because the poem stands so well on it's own without them) or find that missing link. This is very good work. Keep working on it.

[Marc L Abbott]

This made me cold just reading it. It made me think of those very cold days when i was a kid trying to walk home in snow and wet rain. Very well written. Great feel to it.