Give Me Loneliness (a poem for travelers and dreamers)

Sagres, Portugal, early May.

This past weekend, after a few wonderful weeks of travel and adventure with friends and family, I gave myself the gift of a few days utterly alone. I went to a tiny town at the end of the world—Sagres, Portugal. (There is magic there, you should know.) I surfed (badly), ate (decently), and puttered about (spectacularly), and I did my best to avoid making friends so as to properly refill my creative batteries. Or something like that.

My airbnb host gave me various well-intentioned suggestions on where to drink and how to meet other travelers, none of which I followed.

She was worried about me feeling lonely. I wasn’t.

On my last morning in town, I sat down at the Perceve Kiosk for coffee with a view of the sea, and I wrote this poem. I hope it may speak to the part of you that also, perhaps secretly, craves loneliness.

Give Me Loneliness

Give me loneliness.
Give me long mornings where not one word passes my lips.
Give me dinner for one.
Give me the sweet melancholy of looking out at the sea and whispering—only for myself—“that is so fucking beautiful.”

Beauty shared doubles in its charms,
but beauty held within multiplies without bounds.

Give me loneliness.
Give me empty roads in forgotten towns.
Give me shadowless landscapes where my soul can dance all alone.
Give me sleep, because there is nothing—no one—for which to stay awake.
Give me dreams of open skies and towering cliffs and violent surf, which do not fade on waking.
Give me a soft shawl of solitude, with a bittersweet border. Let me wrap myself in it for an hour, a week, or a year, to keep my dreams warm in daytime.

Dreams shared may reach towering heights for a while,
but dreams kept inside—these grow wings in their own right.

Give me loneliness.
Give me a short coffee and a long, long morning.
Give me voices on the breeze that require no answer.
Give me the low, salubrious song of no footsteps passing.

Give me loneliness—
When I am ready
…after a while…
I will look up and smile.
And you will understand that I was never lonely
not really
but only warming my dreams over a silent flame,
biding my time
until the wind was right
to turn whispers
into flight.

***

Photo Credit: Casparo Brown