intangible

[gedankespieler]

 I just wanna say I greatly enjoyed this poem. Especially the end the zooming out to something as large as Himalayas shrinking and back in again to the driveway and  car is really nice. It really highlights the passage of time and sums it all up with nice ribbon and bow. Showing in time all things pass and end or are reformed. I think that topic is probably an overdone one. The way you have written it though is a nice take and doesn't feel cliched to me. Others with more experience may be able to help you more. Thanks for the read.

Thanks. I was also trying to touch on the intangible nature of the self, and how attempts at compiling your past thoughts and actions into something comprehensible is often futile; thoughts disappear almost as soon as you've had them. I also wanted to evoke the sense of being trapped in imperfect knowledge/understanding, with concepts dissolving even as you create them. Maybe I didn't go into this aspect enough. I have made another edit to the poem, and I suppose it's worth posting.


Amber round the rusting tarn,
oak tree spindles
net Gedanke from the wind.
Understanding passes through
their grasp – too weak,
the sky too vast.
Their brief reflections
wise enough to dance alone
while shadows dance unseen
behind them.


Thick white fog blurs night and day.
Willow feathers fall and rot,
fall apart in toddlers' hands
like smoke.
The thread of self is glimpsed and
lost in garden shade,
tangled with the fallen strings
of shallow faces,
ghosts
who haunt the path as if
their will was not the maze -


and while the driveway gravel crunches
under fallen leaves,
the Himalayas
shrink to dust and pavements grind
to sand, the car to rust.