Poem: An Island

After a decade of thought
and experience
I am forced to admit
that we need community.

It is the reason
that inmates are afraid
of solitary confinement.
Why there are AA meetings
and hacker clubs.

"No man is an island"-
I never really believed that
until today.

Alone, I am sad.
No phone, no computer,
a stranger in a strange place,
I sit next to an old, black, man
with a guitar.
He offers to share a cigarrette
with me
which I accept greedily.
Not because I am out of tobacco,
but because my need to share
with another human being
is so strong,
so tangible,
that I am ready to burst into tears.
My burden seems so heavy.

I see now why I have been
spending so much time
on the computer lately.
So much time reading
and writing;
Blotting out the lonliness.

All this on the verge
of my departure to a foreign land.
Where I will be farther from those
I know and love
and where perhaps
I'll have even less in common
than with those around me.

Of course I am scared.
Terrified, even.
Only a fool would not be.

But I feel this inner urging,
from I know not where,
telling me;
This is the only way to go.
in common