Your first line is very much: Your first line is very much like the Orthodox belief that Heaven and Hell are the various souls' experience (based on how they lived on earth) of God's effulgent light.
This hits like a riddle and:
This hits like a riddle and a dare, Let's see the (Socratic pehaps) hemlock as both silence and perfection,
the price of words weighed against their cost. A poem that stares you down and refuses to flinch.
This is a powerful: This is a powerful reimagining of the phoenix myth,
the contrast of timeless cycle with our mortal brevity.
The image of the bird sustained by human tears is haunting,
and the closing prayer for love to resurrect from fire
gives the piece both ache and hope.
A truly striking meditation on endurance and renewal.
This is luminous, Karl! I: This is luminous, Karl! I love how you move from the vastness of the cosmos to the intimacy of human connection.
The sun’s fusion as a metaphor for love and presence is so powerful,
especially in the way you show warmth igniting meaning in a cold universe.
The closing lines about being becoming light and two becoming one are quietly transcendent.
This piece really moved me,:
This piece really moved me, patriciajj ...the bonsai image captures so vividly how age can prune life down,
yet the closing vision opens into something vast and luminous.
I love how you hold the tension between diminishment and faith,
ending with that powerful affirmation of never having left God. A beautiful meditation.
Wow!! So many bridges between: Wow!! So many bridges between a few very intense mood shifts, from feeling as bleek and empty on the canteen as a melancholic drifter, with wisdom which showers down like dry leaves in fall, braids playing upon the back of a dainty darling playing upon the playground swing of better memories...
Thank you, so glad the:
Thank you, so glad the railroad metaphor resonated with you. I wanted it to carry both the physical sense of movement and the more inward sense of crossing from one state to another, so it means a lot to hear that it came through.
This really touched me,: This really touched me, thank you. That opening line was meant to carry its own weight, almost like a hinge the rest of the poem could lean on, so it means a lot that it struck you so strongly. And describing the “restless stillness” of reverb as more than a feeling, but an experience is exactly the atmosphere I was hoping to conjure, where silence itself becomes charged with memory. Your words capture the spirit of the piece beautifully.
I really appreciate this,: I really appreciate this, Starward-Led. "Burnt Offerings" was not immediately on my radar, but I love that connection. The way that film makes the house itself feel like a living, haunted presence is very close to what I was trying to capture with the silence in this poem. I wanted the space to feel charged, as if it remembered more than it revealed. Thanks for drawing that parallel. It’s a really great lens to see the piece through.
It's awesome that you:
It's awesome that you imagined it as a creature trembling up there in the beams — that’s exactly the kind of half‑seen presence I that could be left open in the silence. Is it just sound fading, or something else waiting in the rafters? I’m glad that little shiver at the end came through for you.
Thanks so much for this: Thanks so much for this generous response. I really like that you saw a Daoist quality in the poem; that sense of stillness and repetition was exactly what I hoped to capture, where the ordinary details of life feel both weighty and strangely calming. Your phrase “beautiful snapshots of life” really resonates with me, since I wanted each image to stand on its own but also flow together into a quiet whole. I’m glad that came through for you.
Sometimes, for some things,: Sometimes, for some things, there is no other recourse but to go that way. And thre is that deep realisation that the passage is not cheap and there is an altering at such depths. This was aiming for that bittersweet mix of loss and resilience, so your mention of Ulysses feels spot on. Thanks for reading and sharing your much valued reaction.
Wise words once again: Jesus man! You were breaking my heart there. I kept thinking, "He's not going to end it this way is he?!!" I mean, everything you say here really stings with real human experience and loss. A solemn rite of passage indeed. But you pull it off wonderfully.
Reminds me of the end of Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson:
"Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'We are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,—One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
Thanks for your poem!
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