As soon as I write this, I: As soon as I write this, I will be praying immediately and with faith that you are in the best of hands and that everything will work out for your highest good. May your work here be blessed and may love, light and angels surround you always.
Wow, thank you so very much: Wow, thank you so very much for taking the time to read this poem which, I admit, is a bit experimental for me. I appreciate your astute analysis of it; and, just to be candid, I have to admit I wrote it a little backwards, beginning with the conclusion and then working my way back from it. I had had a nightmare during my most recent "nap" time in which certain figures from my past shut me out of PostPoems, and after that happened, the dream was about pretending to have access but not having it.
The young couple are in there to add "bait" for Pendaric but still frustrate him in the end, as I could not have allowed him to assault them. Thank you so much for your comment.
I was very impressed by the: I was very impressed by the sly and measured build-up complete with an atmosphere of menacingly idyllic beauty and calm. Right there you shrewdly hint that something is weighing heavily upon the pretender, upon the "halcyon tranquility" that surrounds him. The clues are so subtle yet significant that they become alarming, pulse-pounding, mystifying in the best way.
What narrative prowess. Amazing!
Then I was hooked completely when some startling backstory about the setting as well as some unsettling personality traits of the turbulent denier of his nature were revealed. Your unique talent truly shines in your intense focus on symbolic and emotive details that explore the minds and hearts of characters who are never cardboard cutouts, but often multidimensional. Details such as those volatile grains of sand on the socks . . . almost, not quite, in the water.
An eruption of psychological trauma with a cautionary note.
Wow! Just amazing.
I agree. I like the Russian: I agree. I like the Russian Orthodox concept of the holy fool---it can be extreme (and, when abused, results in freaks like Rasputin). but it also gives a purpose to our foibles and failures. At this late stage of my life, that is a comfort to me.
We are all (myself included): We are all (myself included) subject to human folly. That makes fools of all of us. But fools often dance deliriously like whirling dervishes uncertain but hopeful of finding some pittance of enlightenment--or some such tomfoolery.
Thank you so much for the: Thank you so much for the comment, for your customary close reading, and for the encouragement in your words. I don't think this sequence would have become what it is without your encouraging remarks, and I gladly acknowledge jow indebted I am to your work, and your stature on this site as its finest Poet.
First, the title: lightening: First, the title: lightening struck and you harnessed megawatt beauty. Pure gold!
I'm completely smitten by your strategy here: the device of nature as lover. In turn the breeze, the sunlight and the sand blithely adore him with capricious abandon—something dried-up, fun-hating prudes couldn't stop even if they were capable of recognizing it.
In the last lines the magic truly begins: the melody, the foreplay, that the Earth began becomes a full-blown, climatic symphony. Knowing that what is not said is far more explosive than explicit description, you used subtlety with staggering finesse and created a showpiece that is a knockout example of timelessness, sensuality and excellence.
Ad Astra continues to live up to its name!