‘To Solitude’ and Other Poetry by Morgan Downs

To Solitude

Come, Solitude, my first and truest friend!
Long hours of careless converse burden me,
And I have need of hospitality
Such as art thou alone meet with to lend.
What synthesis my past encounters blend,
What sweetness in the cup of memory
Or bitter bile, I taste apart with thee,
Who knowest how to mark the differend.
Thereafter, let us leave such things and go,
For friends have too a present route to know:
Pacing along the steepy height of stone
To write upon the zephyr vision’s name,
Or in the bed of night, lying alone,
To read in prose or rhyme the worth of fame.

Sometimes I Ruminate on What Is Past

Sometimes I ruminate on what is past,
As well on those who now, apart from me,
Traverse their time in distant secrecy,
Chasing their mortal moment to the last.
We are or were of common feeling cast,
And search in even measures longingly,
But whom one knows one finds but chancingly,
Oblivious ashes littered on the blast.
The former hours bathed in the spring of mirth,
The distant piles of warm-caressing worth,
Where are they now? Whither their steps involve?
Their ears are shut, their steps unfeeling sands;
One moment’s wake in shadow’s cloying hands,
They mind me not; Death laughs at my resolve.

Morgan Downs is a poet in his 20s living in Massachusetts.