When will the light
go out?
Where will it be kept
hidden?

I held your attention
longer than I intended
more than I thought possible.

There are songs now
that will always
take me –

To the moment
I looked up
and found you
looking too.

I know the weight of things
heavier with the knowing

I am the physicist measuring
the depth of the universe
the cosmologist searching
for exploding stars

They believe I might be
the dark matter
that wild energy
that just might hold us together

I remain steady
suspended with hope
as they disintegrate
one by one

The stars in my universe
lighting the darkness inside

Walk with me
let the dreams breathe
just for one day

Into the clouds
into the mountains
along unnamed roads

Let the crisp air
pull us together

Rest with me
even as the sky dims

We will find our way
in the morning

An excerpt from Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Oh, how one wishes sometimes to escape from the meaningless dullness of human eloquence, from all those sublime phrases, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the wordlessness of long grinding labor, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding rendered speechless by emotion.

McCandless starred and bracketed the paragraph and circled “refuge in nature” in black ink.

Next to, “And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness. And this was most vexing of all,” he noted “happiness only real when shared.”