Lonely

Bonnie's suggested prompt for this week's Photo Art Friday was to create a vintage look with a photo. I chose this image I took of a field in Warrenton, VA and worked with it until it looked "old". I used various textures, including Bonnie's "Age It" texture. It looks so lonely and desolate, as a lot of old photos do - but I like the effect! Please click on the button below to visit Bonnie's blog and see more wonderful photo art. I'm also including a poem I wrote about loneliness - it seemed to fit so well with my image. I was trying to convey that hollow feeling of "aloneness" we all feel sometimes, even when we're surrounded by love - it's a burden of our human consciousness that we must bear.

LONELY

Loneliness endures
Pressed like dead flowers
Between the pages
Of our lives
Swelling in our bellies
Hungry in the pockets
Of our jackets
Alongside hidden hands
With trembling fingers
And our polite lips
Reveal nothing

Loneliness is a ghost
A beastly spirit
Flying over our town
Settling at our bedsides
Begging for a fight, and
We're not the fighting kind
Haunting our hearts
Floating in our yards
Flooding our eyes and
Darkening our skies
As night comes on

Loneliness caws
From the crook of our lungs
Like a melancholy blackbird
Shivering on a fir
Anguish in her breast
Braced against the wind
While thick, pale clouds
Suffocate the moon
And the angels
In the rain
Are out of earshot

Loneliness overtakes
The hush of our minds
With the musty burden
Of a gray-green moss
Coating our souls' panes
With a stark, aching frost
While a clock ticks
In an empty field
And our hearts beat
Calmly, steadily,
Dying for a touch.

© Sherri Brannon