1 = nature

2 = hunger

3 = memory

4 = fellowship

5 = question

6 = return

After weeks of travel, I retired to Nature

And slumped in thought, slaking my present hunger

With the shadows of ideas that burned in my memory

That blistering yearning for intellectual fellowship

That chases me to the brink of a question

The answer evades me, ever teasing, and so I return

To this seat on a rock overlooking the dawn’s return

She heralds the day, as dictated by her nature

I cannot help but wonder if she ever asks a question

If she ever loves, or thirsts, or feels the pangs of hunger

If I could personify the dawn, maybe we could form a semblance of fellowship

And yet, for all my wishing, she will never be human, nor contain me in a memory

I remain alone, untouched, leafing through my memory

What has prompted this sudden return

To lonesome pondering by the sea? Perhaps the loss of fellowship

That bright comfort of shared experience, so necessary to human nature.

With a sudden lurch of new and profound hunger,

I yield to my personal ocean of self-pity, too lost in its depths to remember the essential question

“What does it mean to exist?”, that is the question

That has haunted me since my first known memory

Sometimes the hunger to Know shouts louder than physical hunger

It is in these moments that I return

To the place where I can unburden my mind, my mouth, and take apart my nature

Because that is the paradox of man-to-man fellowship:

It both soothes and chafes— that wound, that balm we call fellowship,

The company of other beings who burn with the need to question,

To tip the world upside down and examine its nature—

Yes, that need would have us all abandon the pain of memory,

Would have us bare our weak bodies in a return

To primal vulnerability, to naked hunger

For each other. And perhaps the hunger

Carries merit, but it seems a strange thing to call it fellowship,

When really we’re rubbing our wounds against each other, eager to return

Kindnesses; eager to remind each other of the essential question

Which always dangles in the recesses of memory,

Sometimes necessitating, as it does now, a return to the company of Nature.

In rekindling the fellowship between my self and my memory,

I once more yield to the solitude of Nature, although my question

Is bound to return one day with profound and heightened hunger.

——

A/n: This one feels a bit… convoluted. Not as clear or concise as I thought it would be. 😅 I’m open to any and all suggestions to improve it!