Ethelene Dyer Jones – January 2013
What brings on that lonesome feeling? Sometimes it can be triggered by a sight, a sound, a memory, a gravestone, a picture on the wall, a favorite place now vacated of a favorite person. And fog-clad mornings like this one do not lessen the lonesome feeling. Here’s another of my “spur-of-the-moment” poems. I know it needs work, but the emotion and sincerity behind the lines are genuine, even if the form and presentation may still lack polish.
That Lonesome Feeling written by Ethelene Dyer Jones
“Look down, look down that lonesome road”…-Gene Austin
Here I sit, like a friendless wayfarer,
A desolate person, lost and alone;
Forsaken, forlorn, no friend to cheer me,
An outcast, destitute, and far from home.
Why sit I here with clouds around me–
Secluded, outcast, far from my home?
If I but arise and travel homeward,
I’ll find welcome there–no more sad and lone.
Those first steps taken, the rest come easily
As I head to the haven of rest and home;
No need to keep this lonesome feeling,
When awaiting me are love and home.
-Ethelene Dyer Jones, Jan. 9, 2013, after reading Tipper Pressley’s blog, “Blind Pig & the Acorn”–‘Lonesome Feeling’
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If you’d like to read the post that inspired Ethelene’s lovely poetry go here.
Tipper
Jeane – Think of home in baseball terms. It’s the place you are always running away from but also the place you are trying to reach. There may be stops along the way but if you do it right, you get to go back where you started.
Tipper,
and Jeanne….I think for what ever it is worth….”Home is where the heart is!” Of course, it is an old cliché!
Now then..since I am an artist/crafty person of sorts…I have a saying for myownself….”Home is where the ART is!”
That is one reason I carry a few art supplies with me where ever I may wander! ha So I don’t get lonely when I am in the “artsy” zone!
Thanks Tipper
I think I must be a very lucky person for I very rarely have felt lonely since growing into adulthood. Though I grew up in a very full house, the oldest of six children, I did feel alone a great deal as a child, but I didn’t feel it again until about a year after I retired.
I always thought my retirement would be filled with the busyness of crafts – crocheting, knitting, loom beading, jewelry rehab and design, quilting, but after a while, I found I missed people very much. Then I remembered a little inspiration I’d read a few years earlier that said loneliness was a sign God has something for us to do out among His people, and to go forth and do it, and I was lucky to find a little 10-hour a week job nearby that got me out among His people.
God bless.
RB
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Where is “home” if not where I am now….as I have lived so many places that none qualify as “home”, the way your readers and writers talk about. I guess I sort of miss that concept and place. Where is home, as I am lonesome for it?
OK. Now have the girls wite the melody and record it.
I loved the poem, Ethelene. I get that ol’ lonesome feeling myself occasionally. A lot of the times its for my childhood memories. I try to always remember that God said He would never leave me nor forsake me, and that always chases the blues away from me!
Tipper!! I have a question….just recently I was asked by my wife,,,, “what is Crep”? It refers I think to canning…born and raised in the country of Floyd county ky,,, and we always canned everything would go into a jar… but crep is one I have never heard of….can you shed a lite on this???
Tipper,
Chitter sure is gorgeous in that picture. I get lonesome too when I think of my family and the way things use to be. Guess we shouldn’t dwell so much on the past.
A long time ago I had a Registered German Shepherd. His name was G.I. Joe and he was the best friend you could ask for. He was not a jealous dog, cause he accepted my daughters and just loved everybody. I had him for 15 years and fed him his last meal of deer burgers. He wagged his tail and he was gone. I have an 8 x 10 picture of him framed right by my computer and am reminded of bringing him home as a puppy in a shoebox. Lordy, I miss him still…Ken
I rarely feel lonesome, but at times I am overcome with homesickness even while I am home. I think it is much the same thing.
This was an excellent poem about feeling alone. When I lost my daddy in 2002 I was devastated. He had always been so strong, a veteran of Korea which is where he was when I was born. He was the best fisherman in the world and fried fish was taken for granted until my dad passed away then there was none. The first time my husband and I took a drive by one of daddy’s lakes he fished I emotionally broke down. My husband said we just won’t come back. Time being the best healer I began wanting to go to that lake the loneliness of missing my daddy was comforted by being somewhere he went and he had also taken me. Loneliness creeps in and walls of my house seem closing in a visit to daddy’s fishing place takes that feeling away. Everyone told me I took too long to mourn my dad and I tell them grieving for someone is different and if I felt lonely over daddy being gone I’d deal with it on my own but someday I’ll see my dad again in heaven. That’s a comfort that helps loneliness.
The worst kind of lonesome isn’t when you are by yourself, but when you are surrounded by people who can’t or choose not to relate to you.
Seven years ago today my dear husband passed on. Its been so comforting to read these comments, this beautiful poem, and to read the earlier post. It is a very unsettling feeling of how I can been in a group of people yet feel that brief, lonely feeling brought about by wanting to share the good times with someone. My 96-year-old mother is always reliving her earlier days with longing. My dad, all of her siblings and long-time friends are gone now and my heart aches to see her long for those times. I think as we sometimes tend to plod through a day, we forget to live it to the fullest. I try to choose joy everyday and to recognize and be thankful for all the tender mercies that will come each day.
All are human, and nobody can live life without experiencing tragic and sad events in life. These events give us more capacity to feel empathy for those experiencing that same pain. The good book even says “There is a time to cry and a time to laugh.” I rarely feel lonesome, as so much to do and so many projects that I’ll never get done in three lifetimes. Love those ole lonesome songs!
Mountains can give one the most exhilarating feeling, but no feeling quite as lonesome as gazing at miles of mountains with a loved one no longer present to share. The Blind Pig covers such a wide range, and can even make lonesome an interesting subject. Thanks to Ethelene for taking a sad feeling and giving hope for the deep sadness.
I like the poem as written; it gives a feeling of mystery. It makes the reader wonder what is happening in the writer’s life at the time of composing. One can read through the lines and get a feeling of life.
Tipper,
and Ethelene…Thanks for sharing your poem. I like it the way it is….I think sometimes the feeling is lost when we try to overwork or change the original thoughts we write down. I am not a language expert of course, and I know some grammar and punctuation makes the word more acceptable. For me and the way I read your poem, it sure targets the thoughts and meaning of lonesome…
There are so many songs about being lonesome.
One of my favorites of sadness, and lonesomeness is, Hank Williams “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”
“Lonesome Valley” by Woody Guthrie…I also like the blue grass sound of “High Lonesome Sound” by Vince Gill sung and played with Alison Krauss…(love that gal’s music)
Of course…Gene Austin’s lyrics noted by Ethelene…”Look Down That Lonesome Road”….I didn’t know the song had several titles until I looked for all the lyrics by Gene Austin…music written by
Nathaniel Skilkret…
I think we need to try and get out of these “after Christmas blues” or as I call “the winter blahs”!
A good snow would liven things up a bit thus, changing the landscape to a pure white light of God and as it melts, the blessing of the sacred water will bring on Spring….resurrecting our thoughts to hope!
Thanks Tipper,
and Ethelene for sharing….
The poem is beautiful and needs no polishing. We all get that old lonesome feeling, especially as we get older. I don’t know why I get that feeling on pretty summer days when all is quiet and I am relaxing outside. It surely must be memories from my lonesome childhood. Without playmates close by, toys or anywhere to go, I spent many summer days just looking and listening for any movement or sound the mountains offered.
A nice poem with a hopeful ending of home and love awaiting one’s return. There are, however, those of us at a certain point in life for whom home no longer exists and there is no love down the road. There are nonetheless havens of rest , memories, and friends.
Some of us, I think, are especially prone to that lonesome feeling. I can’t say whether it is a good thing or a bad thing. It just is. Lots of things go into it but a big part I think is thinking about how things have changed and will change. And to the extent that there is anything completely personal then in that we are alone. Each of us has some of that space.
Related I think is how comfortable, or not, one is with being alone. Some people it seems can’t stand it. Others, like me, enjoy solitude and even need some amount of it. We can be alone without being lonesome. Maybe that’s why I like pictures of roads, rails and trails winding out of sight.
Anyway, that’s my take …..
Ethelene, Nicely rendered, very nicely indeed (although I rather suspect it was written in 2013 rather than 1913:).
I find that the season of the year and the amount of light (or lack thereof) trigger loneliness in me. There’s always a bit of loneliness in autumn with the turning of the season, and grey winter days have the same impact. I once lived in Scotland for a time during the winter, and the lack of light at that far northern latitude really made for lonely feelings.
The other time I find myself seized by the mollygrubs of loneliness is when I think about folks who are gone, especially my parents and grandparents but also childhood buddies and even old girlfriends. That is, of course, a product of passing time and advancing age.
Thanks for this excursion into loneliness, and don’t think loneliness doesn’t have its own special beauty. Wordsworth expressed it wonderfully well in “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.”
Jim Casada
My sisters neighbor, several years ago, said her son had that lonesome feeling. My sister asked her what she meant, she replied, ” that lonesome feeling, when so many of your friends have died as you get older, they are people that you have special memories with and you have no one left to share that memory with you.” A few years later my husband died and a little later, I ran into some people that only he and I knew when we first married. I remember thinking, “I can’t wait to get home and tell him,” I then realized that he was gone and I had no one that this particular memory meant anything to, I experienced that “lonesome” feeling that she was talking about.
Sweet. And so familiar…especially the ending. Down that long and winding lonesome road where lonesome ends with love and dogs (redundant?) and fires warmth.
Until it popped up on Blind Pig today, I had forgotten about my poem, “That Lonesome Feeling,” from January 9, 1913. I went back and read that post, too, and enjoyed Chatter and Chitter playing and singing, and especially Pap’s expression as he listened to them and showed his silent approval! Nostalgia is a good part of life. The moments of nostalgia and remembrance, even if evoking feelings of sadness at times, of sheer loneliness, too, help us to be grateful that experiences in life make such an impact at times that we get ‘that lonesome feeling’ to relive them–even if in memory. I’m a “journal keeper” and lately I’ve been reading over some past years’ jottings to regain a sense of experiences that made me who and what I am. I think we all see, upon such examination, that there were areas wherein we could have made improvements. But then too, there are experiences that strengthened us, gave a certain tone and timber to life that make living life the interesting tapestry it is!
When I’m out in the County working, a lot of times I will eat lunch at a Grave Yard, I like to look over the graves and try to get a sense of the families buried there, in a short time that feeling comes over me and for a moment I can feel some of what the families left behind, must have felt when they laid their love one to rest, especially the Babies..
The picture goes well with the post. I feel lonesome sometimes. I thing it comes from living alone and spending so much time alone….or maybe not. Maybe it’s missing the parts of myself that I haven’t meet yet and the parts of myself that have gone because their time is over. There is a certain emptiness to the in-between.
I enjoyed the poem!
This is lovely, Ethelene.