She lived, so quietly, inside her mind,
She worked from dawn till dusk...
The ranchwork was never done.
She cried, when her man did not come back,
Then rolled up her sleeves and set to work.
The desert stretched endlessly
In all directions.
She was just a lonely woman, young and afraid,
In all that space.
Sometimes, her mouth would quirk,
Just a bit; and if anyone
Had been there to look,
They would have seen the heartache, the vulnerability, there.
But no one looked.

Who found her poems?
Weary wanderers,
Men who tumbled across
The desert with the 
Tumbleweed.
Lonely souls, who had long forgotten
The sight of another human face,
The sound of laughter,
The caress of a gentle hand.

Alone
With the desert and the sky
They read her 
Tumbleweed poetry
And remembered
Warmth, hope, love, happiness, companionship.

And...
We live, even now, so much inside ourselves,
Lost in our secret lives
As surely as that 
Lonely woman
Was lost out in the desert.
We send our poems out
Into the electronic desert,
Tied to tumbleweeds of
Electric impulses.
Who will read them?
Will we ever meet
Our audience?
Will we ever see their smiles,
Hear their tears,
As they read our thoughts?
Perhaps not,
And yet....and yet,
The gift is in the writing,
The joy is in the reading,
The comfort is in the sharing.
And so, we write, and smile,
And cast our love 
Out into the desert,
With the tumbleweed,
The Russian thistle,
The lonely tumbleweed
That brings an end
To aloneness for us all.

© Marica Wickes