We trek to a place of solitude,
this lonely place, to sit,
to listen to the water, to the wind, to the silence:
the silence speaks to us as we walk, as we sit.
And in this lonely place the loneliness drains from us –
from our arms, our legs, our beating hearts –
richness fills us:
the voices of the pines, the balsam, and the birch
which call out to us in the wind.
Gentle, the breeze ruffles the needles, the leaves.
We have searched – endlessly –
for this place:
for the solitude that is in loneliness,
for the depth that is boundless,
without form.
Here, the emptiness fills us,
completes us.
—Mary Elyn Bahlert, “At Solitude Swale,” Door County, Wisconsin, 5/2025
