The voices — Summary

Dave BontaContemplative

all alone I am them to see and sit with a town doing much in me

Learn Poems app

Try the Learn Poems app

Everything from the website trainer, and more: new exercises, voice recording and sharing, reminders, quick review.

Four short lines, and they leave a lot unsaid. The speaker says they are "all alone," but the next phrase turns that around: "I am them." Being alone doesn't mean being empty. The speaker seems to carry other people, perhaps the voices of the title, inside them, so solitude becomes a kind of crowded room.

The lines then drift toward something quieter: "to see and sit / with a town." The gap in the middle of the third line looks like a pause, a breath, or a moment of settling in. The speaker isn't taking charge of the town or leaving it. They just sit and watch. The last line, "doing much in me," suggests that all this watching and listening has an effect, that the town and its voices are working on the speaker from the inside.

The mood is hushed and contemplative. The grammar is loose and a little broken, which fits the feeling of thoughts forming and dissolving. The poem asks us to slow down and listen.

Read also

More by Dave Bonta

All poems
ContemplativeDave Bonta

Plea bargain

I hear half a beat of drum to serve time have half a hope in the meantime praise God
DreamyDave Bonta

Cibola 3

I awake in the dark and shake free of sheets & blankets, of down-filled quilt. The rituals of waking– the long, hot shower, the coffee–give
ContemplativeDave Bonta

In good light

On a maple’s pale bark, a zigzag ladder—old tooth-marks from a wandering snail? Green islands of moss