The Hermit's Tale

Somebody asked me,
“What did you do this weekend?”
and I thought
long and hard before
I answered.
Cause truth be told
I didn’t do a damn thing.
I sat on my couch
laptop burning my legs
and browsed poetry sites.
Seeking what
I don’t know.
Inspiration?
Escape?
Absolution?

I gorged myself
on peanut butter swirl ice cream
diet vanilla coke
and too many metaphors.
My only company
the background din
of the teenagers
of Degrassi High
facing one adversity
after another.
and my needy cat
meowing her disapproval
of my lazy ways.

Guilt,
at wasting blazing
sunshine filled days,
nagged at my peripheral
like a mosquito
humming
too close to my ear.
Absently, I shooed it away
to the deepest recesses
of my mind,
knowing it was not
silenced
but at least
temporarily subdued..

Three times the sun rose
and soared across the sky
and set somewhere
beyond my sight.
It danced in unison
with my ticking
tiger clock,
marking the moments
of summers passing.

I watched it
from my window
wallowing in self pity
as I fed fries and a whopper
to the aching emptiness
of unknown origin.

And I read,
Keats,
Cummings,
Frost,
Poe
and Plath
I immersed myself
in their pain
their sorrow
their joys
and their accomplishments.

And I read…
Until my ass grew numb
and the indentation
in my couch cushion
groaned its displeasure
and my thighs
had 1st degree burns.
and my cats meow,
like my conscience,
became more insistent.

And then…
I crawled back up
through the cracks in my psyche
and penned these words.

And now…

I am ready to answer the question…

What did I do this weekend?

I healed…