open.substack.com/pub/fenlandmusings/p/the-loneliness-of-the-long-distance
The table, though, is laid, and flames flicker from welcomed fires, and I notice how smoke creates quite the atmosphere. I am present to it all, I entertain and listen, bending my stubborn ear to hear vast things, valuable things, the as yet unheard gifts of ageing, the gifts that only a well-trodden soul might know. Tomorrow, and who could be sure, maybe sorrow will pay a visit to my forested table, a close and dear friend of loneliness. If they are able, perhaps joy will sit with us, and so too, some slender happiness, though, Friends, it does not trouble me should they hang back at the edge, some of life’s sweetest gifts bide their time. Above us now a cosmic canopy of stars, distant yet bright, stirs a question within my beating chest