Author Information
Words Like Smoke and Sand
Why do the words I didn't say
speak the loudest?
Why do they shake the walls,
brood, repeat and
become the cracked glass I breathe, the
cast-iron cave I wear around me?
I could have said them when we were
bodies, interchangeable,
and an essence, undivided;
when everything was beautiful because
you were everything;
when we defied the sneering sun
to outlive our fire
while we tumbled in its molten gaze,
and all around,
the green sizzle of a world in love
with light and just being.
You left glorious ruins I'll sift through
all my days as I try to sketch a
world without you:
distant hills, a rough outline of
some profound truth or just the
spills of powdered ice-blue they
used to be,
and I'll clutch, unrepentant, the
dwindling spool of your memory.
Don't dissolve into the sky or be
like footprints in the rain or the
flowers on your grave or floating peace
like the smoky hymns of evening.
A spritz of light appears between
the pines. A sound like wind
or words
or pouring sand fills the world.
Patricia Joan Jones
Wow!!!
Wow!!!
Don't let any one shake your dream stars from your eyes, lest your soul Come away with them! -SS
"Well, it's love, but not as we know it."
Thank you kindly, dear poet,
Thank you kindly, dear poet, for your luminous imprint on my day.
Perfect! The poem i wish I'd
Perfect!
The poem i wish I'd written. All the elements and beauty there. A pure old fashioned gaping Wow...!
Its ben said by a few already. What could I add but the feelings and reactions in my soul and that feeling in my gut like every line was just gonna be right and it was and the relief at the end when perfection was not breeched.
Beauty and talent transcended
And I am sad because the possibility of me writing this poem is gone, but I am so happy to have read it. Thankyou so much!
Don't let any one shake your dream stars from your eyes, lest your soul Come away with them! -SS
"Well, it's love, but not as we know it."
Thank you, dear talented
Thank you, dear talented friend, for your extremely encouraging feedback. What an unexpected and much-appreciated morale boost! Trust me, there's no shortage of brilliance and power in your gallery of word art. Again, thank you!
The sound like that of wind
The sound like that of wind or pouring sand in the parting of pins has given more than a decent spritz of poetic regret. What I love is that regret becomes a growing and learning experience rather than a mere negative emotion that has to be rid off or left behind or buried. Thanks for sharing.
here is poetry that doesn't always conform
galateus, arkayye, arqios,arquious, crypticbard, excalibard, wordweaver
Thank you for your wisdom and
Thank you for your wisdom and insight. Your words are supreme guidance to grow by.
"...smoky hymns of evening"
That could be the title of a surrealist epic poem. "...a rough outline of some profound truth" in the ruins of what ince was ~ infused inspiration. What is unbuilt, destroyed are raw materials from which a small green sprout arises.
.
"...a sound like...pouring sand." I adore a great passage of time image. Poet idea based, independent of symbolism, rocks. The last 5 lines are a wizard's workings. Well said.
.
~A~
.
I'm stunned and deeply
I'm stunned and deeply honored by your brilliant words of appreciation. Just to receive a read by a talented and accomplished writer is a thrill, but to receive such an insightful and beautiful assessment is a great gift.
Thanks and more thanks!
On the last night of my
On the last night of my hospitalization, and anticipating tomorrow's return home, I am very glad to have read, and now to comment upon, this poem.
I am not going to write my usual comment, but I am going to be very personal, because I think this poem deserves that kind of response. In other words, rather than discuss how the poem works, I am going to disclose a more difficult aspect---how it works on me as a reader.
First, this was gut-wrenching for me to read, because I wish I had articulated to Etienne, in college, what ypu have written here. Etienne and I could have shared what you have so brilliantly described as the green sizzle of a world in love / with light and just being. (BTW, these lines are the poem's gravitational center.)Like the great Poets who are your peers, you take emotions that are inexpressible for most of us, and attach to them certain images that function as bearers of those emotions. "These fragments I have shored against my ruin," T. S. Eliot wrote in the final section of The Waste Land, and you have shored up the emotional ruin that I experienced after failing to respond to Etienne's love, and that has haunted me since 1977---and most especially since his passing, several years ago.
As the Poem concludes we have several aspects of one process---the spritz of light among pines, a sound like wind or words, and the pouring of sand to fill the world. I remember from my childhood watching dawn light come through the pine tree farm that was adjacent to our back yard, and that was always a comforting sight, despite, if on a school day, what kind of bullying (for being different) might be in store for me. The sound of wind---which, in Scripture represents Holy Ispiration---and the sound of words (another speaks to me, so I am not entirely alone, despite being made to feel totally alone and isolated by my shabby treatment of Etienne. And finally, sand---as ballast, to balance the world, which may---when these emotions that the Poem names comes among us to make us teeter off balance when the emotional resonance is a little too much to handle, as it may be from time to time while we are alive in this flesh. However, the sand pouring into the world is also the sand in an hour glass, bringing nearer that hour when we shall be released from these deteriorating bodies and can soar, as released spirits, into the Kingdom of Love, where the person you address in the Poem, and Etienne, will be waiting to greet us, and to give us those words of absolution in that dominion of unrestrained Grace.
You have placed many marvelous comments on my poems, and my Ad Astra series exists because of your encouragement. But, with this poem, you have shown me a side of yourself, and a side of myself, that exist apart from our sitewide personas as Poets (you, major; me, as minor as the day is long): rather, in this poem, you and I, and you and anyone else who has shared these feelings of regret (sometimes, as in my case, a desperate, almost choking, feeling of regret) meet, not as Poets, or as Poet and reader, but as raw souls carrying burdens that we just cannot put down. And in this way, your Poem enters the Canon of Literature as an equal to the poems of three other Poets: Eliot, Cavafy, and Vergil. Each of them has given us a poetic description of what it is to be a raw soul. And your poem is, in the final analysis, hidhly uplifting as ir presents, in its conclusion, the processes that function as balm upon the rawness. The entire poem is one of the most emotionally searing poems that I have ever read; but, like Dante's Comedy, the balm is offered after the sear has been endured.
Thank you for posting this poem; for ministering to my soul; and for giving me a way to articulate my horrible failure toward Etienne, and the hope and promise of his forgiveness---which, in the timelessness of the Kingdom of Love, already exists. _________________________________________________
PS. I am always a day late and a dollar short, and I have a bad habit of not including important details in some of the comments I make, so I want to amend this one now. I mentioned, above, Vergil, Cavafy, and Eliot; bur I forgot to mention Pop Stevens, which was stupid on my part because your Poetry as a whole joins his in the cosmic or long perspective; but also, this poem reminds me of two of his "healing" poems---"The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain" and "Final Soliloquy Of The Interior Paramour." In both of these poems, he set aside, for a moment, the cosmic grandeur of his other stuff and spoke about the soul's rawness, and its need for a Poem as high and sturdy as a mountain, and a Poem that would articulate that final soliloquy. This is what you have done with this poem. You have put youe cosmic grandeur on hold for a moment, while ministering in a very personal way to those of us who, like you, have this burden of disappointment. You have helped me here, even more than Stevens has helped me, because you have spoken directly, in this poem, to my sorrow about Etienne, and have shown me how it can become joy.
J-Called
Your phenomenal, resonant and
Your phenomenal, resonant and emotionally charged insights into my expression were so moving that I had to pause and reflect on them before offering my humble gratitude.
I can't thank you enough for seeing everything I saw and for accurately interpreting my intentions; in fact, you were so accurate, as you shared your own experience, that a weight was lifted off me. All I could think was: he gets it! Someone truly understands, and that, of course, is a step toward healing.
I recall reading your very touching expression about Eteinne in a post, and thinking perhaps I had some "penance" to do myself. I believe that may have been an impetus to write this poem, although I had to let the idea marinate for a while, being so preoccupied by everything going on in my life.
I'm particularly thrilled that you perceived my intent behind the images. It's a great relief that this work didn't spiral into pure pathos. Your interpretation of my "pouring sand" was incredibly gratifying and heart stopping in its eloquence. What can I say . . .
Thank you also for reminding me of my own words of comfort to you: that when all is said and done, we are forgiven. I say that often to others, but I needed to have it said to me. It made all the difference.
Oh, one more thing: there's nothing minor about your poetry. If it's true that our hearts are weighed on a scale (figuratively speaking and referring to an ancient belief), your poetry, and the heart that birthed it, are immortalized in some cosmic gallery of fine art. When all is said and done, the only thing we take with us is what we did for others. That's not to say your work doesn't have great esthetic value as well. Quite a bonus!
Fathomless gratitude for your kindness.
I failed to reply to this
I failed to reply to this one, as well, and can only apologize with the utmost sincerity. This was just after my release from the hospital, and I had a bit of a rough patch transitioning back home. Please know that none of my failures to reply are intentional. But I am so scatterbrained, especially when I am ill, that I make too many omissions on too many things.
J-Called
There's never any need to
There's never any need to apologize. I understand! I'm immensely grateful for your astounding feedback in spite of your physical pain.
Trust me, you're making a difference in the lives of many people. We're blessed beyond words by your presence here.