Bilbao Alone

Some of the sounds here are familiar: 
Vivaldi plays the same in this language, 
keys rattle in locks,

the engines of buses sigh as they turn street corners. 
But something is different, 
an odd solitude.

It digs itself under my watch into the small bones 
of my wrist. Here in this place are no extras. 
I play the leading role, but I am

as anonymous as my skeleton. 
I have no drawers of envelopes and paper here, 
no cupboards of glasses turned neatly upside down,

no simmering stews, no one whose knees fit 
perfectly behind mine as I sleep. 
Nothing of myself is here except myself.

What I have extends over vast landscapes 
and it requires me to do nothing. 
I sit in a park and watch what passes:

short Basque men whose tobacco lingers long after they 
have gone, dogs whose interest is each other, 
workmen with a ladder, the dignified bus

driver before the return trip, hands crossed behind. 
And then suddenly it is twilight. 
Sometimes one watches for no reason other than the eyes.

Is this grace, this waiting, a simple existing inside of it? 
Is it always as ominous as these first few 
hours of unfamiliarity?

—Jill P. Baumgaertner