Not Random Poetry

My Feedjit site traffic tool tells me that the most often visited page here, is my August 2006 posting of Adrienne Rich's poem, I Dream I'm the Death of Orpheus.  Consistently, over the years, strangers searching for that poem, land on my insignificant (by comparison) blog.  So, I thought it only fitting that I post another of Ms. Rich's works.  Opening my well thumbed edition of Selected Poems 1950 - 2001, I decided that the first page I randomly touched, would be my posting. 
Ah, the Universe. 
Like a mysteriously apt Tarot reading performed by a Gypsy woman in a dim room,
like what it is, joyous, perfect, serendipity,
I opened to this page:

Lonely

You're wondering if I'm lonely:
OK then, yes, I'm lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield in the ocean

You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely

If I'm lonely
it must be the loneliness of waking first, of breathing
dawn's first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep

If I'm lonely
it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it's neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning.

Adrienne Rich
from Diving Into The Wreck
1973