Solipsism is a place
where ghosts gather,
having no place else to go,
dialogues with oneself
on, should life matter
with nothing else to know?
Should I ask
who I am,
or what it is I suffer,
this boat
inside my self
with so much cargo?
I don’t doubt my separateness.
How frightened I am
to be alone, or
terrified in a crowd,
and if this is what life is,
how can life matter?
Or,
How can I make life matter?
Or,
How can I make my life matter?
Or,
Of all the faces that I’ve seen,
which one is my own?
Who collects the clouds?
Records the voices?
Creates pictures for museum walls?
Composes the remarkable
in notes and words?
How things are forged
and played?
And who shifts
through the baggage
when we’re gone,
and says,
this life mattered
in the scheme of things,
and brought forward,
must be called,
wonderful by name.