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The Burden (sonnet)

by Ken Harnisch

I saw you walking on the road to town

Your head was bare of cap, your shoulders ground

Down to their rounded stumps, where troubles lay

Like bundles of straw from the end of days

Each straw a burden in your tangled life

Each day one straw added to the strife

And you, who bore it all, went a mile

More before you noticed me; I smiled;

Two neighbors who had never shared a word

Though living only a fence apart. Absurd!

To think we could know all that much and say

Nothing of it in words from day to day

Two neighbors, strangers who walked to town

Neither asking to take your burden down

08/08/2003

Posted on 08/17/2003
Copyright © 2024 Ken Harnisch

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by Kate Demeree on 08/17/03 at 03:39 AM

How true it is that we can live side by side with someone, and not know them. I hate to use the word beautiful yet again, but it is beautiful, a peek inside the everyday life of a "human" being.

Posted by Melissa Arel on 08/21/03 at 01:16 PM

Wonderful rhyme.. reminds me somewhat of the Robert Frost poem "Mending Wall".. good work..

Posted by Robert Cameron Hazelton on 11/12/03 at 01:49 AM

I read this a couple of weeks ago and thought about it, now reading it again I have to say this is really quite excellent. It's unfortunately true how so many things go unsaid.

Posted by Marjorie Anne Reagan on 09/07/04 at 05:17 PM

The art of smiling could lift many a burdened neighbours spirits. Thought provoking and far too common.

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