Saturday, January 10, 2009

North Face Glades

"The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
.."

She stopped writing, that very moment.
Snow falling on pine, white ash to cover
And silence the emptiness within.
Subconscious realization that words had lost
Their power.
Even the echoes were forced to fall on deaf ears.
Were you not ten feet from me?
Somewhere so close in those winter woods?
Yet you heard nothing.
Calling for you, lonely, desperate for your words --
Mine, hardly breathed, before they fall mute
With the weight of the falling snows.
There is beauty here, she thought,
But even that thought was barely a whisper within.
The cold and dark will come again she knows -- is coming --
And then she will be sorry for loving the sound of silence,
Sorry for imagining herself, momentarily,
Part of its life, part of its death.
Can't wait then, can't stay here
Slowly becoming a citizen of Pompeii
But it is late. Too late.
She moves on, words left to the trees and to the falling snows.
Left Powerless. And she --
She writes no more.

15 comments:

don't be emily said...

You don't comment on mine. I can't comment on yours. Congrats.

~im just only me~ said...

lol i will i will, give a person time! You don't have to be so mattical....whatever that means... :P

William Michaelian said...

Another game of cat and mouse? You both write good poems and you know it.

Was mattical the word verification? They should change it to word pontification, or word celebration, or word abomination....

Sincerely yours,

etermand

don't be emily said...

we just have to hear it from each other. cat and mouse--yeah, i guess so.:P
yours,
rekelt

~im just only me~ said...

lol! Actually we all know Rekelt cant actually write, she just pretends :P Kind of like Coleridge had to put up with that scrawler Wordsworth, we all have to deal with "a cilb" in our midst :P Btw I'm pretty sure that's a portmanteau word ... cherub;imbecile... hehe :P Word pontification indeed :D

don't be emily said...

you would be the one to pontificate about pontification.

William Michaelian said...

I thought portmanteau was a kind of wine. I need to get out more.

don't be emily said...

or drink more wine.:)

Dayna said...

oh surely more wine, so that we might not whine more, and moreso that we might not lose this fight but win...

I feel that I have reach a certain ability of...

raphort

don't be emily said...

Hey Cricket, your abilities of raphort will be greatly enhanced by a word of William's...or several words...here... http://recently-banned-literature.blogspot.com/2009/01/priorities.html

oh. btw. "butbress"

Dayna said...

why thank you aloysius

yours truly,
upplabl

~im just only me~ said...

Just a general poll: Is this a pretty straight forward poem, or do I just think that it makes perfect sense? :D All comments would be appreciated :D

William Michaelian said...

I like it, but I don’t think it makes perfect sense. And maybe that’s why I like it. I like the mood of it, definitely, the lonely quiet of it, the picture it creates, the confessional tone, the interior monologue and stream of consciousness feeling of it.

Does it need to do more, or am I missing the point altogether?

~im just only me~ said...

I suppose a poem doesn't ever need to do more and I guess a really good poem wouldn't do less... I'm not sure what I expect out of it -- to mean something at any rate, to someone, I would hope. I do generally have a sort of philosophical concept in mind, even if rather vague. I apparently often fall into the false conception that the images in my mind that summon powerful thought are the same images that will summon those same thoughts in others. In this case, the power of nature and silence to expose the weakness of language and the inability of words to articulate human thought and feeling. Case in point, I suppose. I am of the opinion, however, that a truly great poem/poet, while accepting the shortcomings of language, is able to transcend and communicate pure uninhibited thought. Not that a poem should always "mean" something -- but that in its very existence it is necessarily meaningful. As I said, I know what I expect, but I am never sure what that expectation actually is :) Perhaps it is a false or naive expectation.

William Michaelian said...

Well, I definitely understood the nature-language idea you were getting at. I think what throws me a little are the four lines beginning with “Were you not ten feet from me?” Right off, I start wondering about who “you” is, and then it shifts back to the third-person narrative.

I don’t know. I like it and prefer not to analyze it. I love the “sorry for loving the sound of silence” part, ending with the Pompeii line.