Pardon my Trebuchet*
So many young fine ladies seem to cast their eyes at me,
But all I do is sit here writing, waiting for Godot;
I’m sure they sometimes wonder why I sit around alone,
It’s not my will to be that way, which one can likely see.
But part of human nature is to fear what we don’t know;
We’d rather wait for someone else to roll away the stone,
And try to hide our wounded hearts by lying on them, prone,
Preventing anyone from planting love’s own seeds to grow–
Solitary, unattached, yet anything but free.
The glory of the loves I’ve lost is nothing that would show,
Nor how I fought like Stonewall Jackson in a blinding snow,
Nor all the times I’ve tried to change the way the dice are thrown,
Nor all the cruel treacheries I failed to foresee,
Nor how I’m not unfriendly, only frozen to the bone…
*(post-Petrarchan sonnet)
At the heart of it, Missed Connections was a meeting place for people outside of the in-person, public realm. While not everyone was searching for the same thing, it did offer an interesting mix of hustlers and heart-breakers, poets and players, and all sorts of personalities in-between. And for those who never posted a word, it was still a curious and entertaining diversion because who hasn’t ever wondered what connections might have slipped by?