Poem: Bricks

The luxury of idle contemplation is a new and very valuable experience.

Bricks

My aloneness washes over me
like a warm friend
with kind words over coffee,
supporting me with ageless friendship

Thoughts spun out in solitude,
the road  full of welcome detours,
idle contemplation, piles of bricks,
to see what arrangement builds a home

No time earlier to peer inside a brick,
study fissures, examine the aggregate,
speculate among the cracks and crevices
hot from the kiln and cooling in my mind

One laid upon its brother frames a wall
Mortar slowly set and rich with recollection,
some joints struck, others trowelled
A journeyman’s hand to hold the blade

If walls close out, they close in as well
Protection from the breath of wolves,
constructing rooms grown soft and warm,
where candlelight throws long shadows