Isn’t it strange how things unravel anticlockwise in the
night, as if thoughts, blindfolded, spiral homeward into
the past? In the morning, even in the half-glow of dawn,
you can float away from yourself, changing their direction,
the end of the trembling dark clutched tight in your hand,
deliberately unwinding pain through a labyrinth of forced
possibilities. Time, then, is just a cruel trick of the light.
Or maybe, love is. I remember lying on our backs on the
sand, the sky close, beginning at the end of our skin,
stars finding the hollows under our nails, clouds moving
in dextral whorls around a proximate moon. Or maybe we
were just looking at it wrong. Maybe it was day. Maybe it
was us whirling and there was one nebulous cloud in the
centre blurring the sun. Maybe we weren’t next to each
other, a deception of trajectory and distance and touch,
the twisted path a long way to reach an inevitable end.
What can I say, Rajani? Mesmerising!
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Thanks so much Kunal.
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And maybe our perceptions change over time. Beautiful imagery! I especially love:
I remember lying on our backs on the
sand, the sky close, beginning at the end of our skin,
stars finding the hollows under our nails, clouds moving
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Thank you Rosemary…
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I love the language of your imagery–beautifully done!
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Thanks so much 🙂
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Your wordplay and imagery is a delight in this one. I’m enchanted by thought the sky “beginning at the end of our skin”. And love maybe being “a trick of the light” sounds like the beginning of a fantastic story.
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Beginning or end of a story! Thanks Magaly!
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Indeed!
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Love this wonderful weaving of words. Another awesome piece!
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Thank you Wendy.
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widdershins…yes. Time at night often seems that way. It is so strange how things work in the night, how their engineering changes.
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Well said, their engineering does change! Thanks Toni.
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“Or maybe we
were just looking at it wrong. Maybe it was day. Maybe . . . ”
Possibilities “gaslight” us when we know we have been side by side, skin touching, on our backs looking up! How can we stop letting illusion and absence convince us of unreality? How can we stop time at the peak of the story?
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Unless illusion is all there is! Thanks so much Susan!
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Complexly evocative thought here with intricate twists and turns.
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Thanks Mary.
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I like the wondering – maybe we were lying on our backs on the sand…..or maybe we weren’t.
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Thank you Sherry.
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Gosh this is absolutely stunning! ❤ I love “Time, then, is just a cruel trick of the light. Or maybe, love is.” 😊
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Thank you Sanaa 🙂
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Our end IS inevitable, and the pathway is indeed often twisted and crooked. But what good would it do to merely sit by the path and wait?
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True!!
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Time travel is a lot more possible in that state between waking and sleeping. Though the perspective of our present selves cannot contact our past directly, no matter how much we wish we would. Nicely done piece on those nighttime regrets that plague us.
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Thank you!
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Such a special poem — the images and trajectories of time and movement and proximity make this vortex all too familiar, even if it stays as puzzling as ever. There are so many beautifully worded phrases here, that it is difficult to pick any one of them.
I particularly loved this bit: “stars finding the hollows under our nails, clouds moving/in dextral whorls around a proximate moon”.
-HA
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Thanks so much Anmol..
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Poets are weavers, and you are an inspiration to us all. Its compact and watery and in love and long lost. I read the other day that Japanese philosophy founds on the idea that thoughts that bend back and down into our deep history. The landscape is misty for that. So too our minds, fast in desire, slow in acceptance. Well done …
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That’s very kind Brendan, thank you. Also for that note on Japanese philosophy…I think everything has to be rooted in the past…both immediate and ancient.
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Great reflections…truly philosophical
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Thank you Jae.
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I love this, Rajani, and saw it on Visual Verse! Anticlockwise, or widdershins, is magic, as is your poem.I like the ideas that ‘thoughts, blindfolded, spiral homeward into the past’ and time ‘is just a cruel trick of the light. / Or maybe, love is’.
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Thanks so much Kim.
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Magical imagery, left my mind deliciously dizzy.
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Thanks so much TioStib.
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Love it!
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Thanks so much Maria!
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the fiery demise
of a far away asteroid;
swirling whirlpool
of life’s debris
in anticlockwise…
come here,
make a wish!
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Little do we know!! Thanks Hemanth!! Love it when poems trigger poems!!
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