PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

You know how I love your: You know how I love your interpretations of my poems; each and every comment you make is precious, salutary, and instructional to me.  But this one, of all of them, encapsultates and summarizes not only the poem but, I think, the purpose for writing poems like these and for launching them out there to cyberspace with the hope they will be read and appreciated. And, with your words, you have shown that this poem has been read and appreciated.  A comment from PostPoems' leading Poet is always an event, and I feel very privileged, blessed, and grateful that you chose this particular poem to read and to comment.  Thank you so much, Patricia, for this kindness, and for your continuing friendship.

So much immersive drama,: So much immersive drama, atmosphere and enthralling fantasy is encapsulated here that I can't praise it enough.   Foremost, it is a ravishing story of unconditional, self-sacrificing devotion and acceptance that alludes to spiritual realities but manifests in the physical. The concept is explosively beautiful: an angelic yet humanoid being gives up the vastness, the bliss, the freedom of "the upper sky" (his very wings) where "He knew the songs the night wind often sings" and enters the care-laden world of a human . . . for love.   Your style, a light touch that relies on consuming slice-of-life emotions for its power, works miraculously against the entrancing backdrop of an otherworldly milieu. You knew instinctively how much to reveal and how to reveal it. For instance, lesser writers might indulge in lavish descriptions (I would be tempted!) while you knew that "crimson sand of this vast beach" was ambiance enough while showcasing the wonders of true "humanity" in the heart of a creature with folded wings and unsteady feet.     You've written many poems that I considered your best, but this, at least to date, might be the best of your best. Certainly my favorite.   Standing ovation!

As this poem begins, one: As this poem begins, one reading it for the first time will be inclined to think it is a dismal poem.  The poem begins with a silenced Earth, certainly from a cataclysmic event (although the Poet does not define that event); then she brings in a grayness, a dismal condition so gray the wind becomes a part of the stone.  She tells us that river mists become like dreams of Vesuvius---perhaps one of the most effective metaphors of cataclysm in human history.  Mention of Vesuvius, like mentioning, say, the Titanic, is a metonomy of disaster and cataclysm.  Then she uses a word I consider bone-chilling in the context of this poem . . . "iron-clad."  But then, within the iron-clad condition, she detects a gleaming of hope.  But she does not reject the iron-clad situation, although she describes it further as a soundless opera, a symphonic tomb, and a sacrament of ice (in these concepts, her perspective leans---I think---toward that of Wallace Stevens, especially in his poem, "The Snow Man").  But she finds in these parts the presence of God, and she recognizes that these are also parts of the Cosmos.  The Cosmos contains things we often do not want to consider:  rogue asteroids that can wipe out millions of dinosaurs; neutonr stars that can devour even light, and crush everything in their grasp to something less than the particles within an atom.  These are also parts of the Cosmos, and they correspond to those symphonic tombs.    But, in being able to recognize the existence of these things, we demonstrate our sentience.  A houseplant knows neither neutron stars nor rogue asteroids, and doesn't care because it doesn't know that it doesn't know.  It is in our cognizance of depair, even when seeming iron-clad, that we can find gleamings of hope and joy:  this is a spiritual sentience that, I personally believe, is alone in the created Cosmos.  But it is an awareness, and also can be an appreciation, of sentient existence.  And that is part of the vocation that I have suggested, elsewhere, with which we have been tasked by the Creator:  to explain the Cosmos to itself.  In this poem, as in all of her Cosmis poems, Patricia does this; and by allowing us to hear her explanations, she makes us better than we have been.

Thank you so much for that. : Thank you so much for that.  Tonight is supposed to be the last of a long run of dismal skies (my vicinity has only experienced partly or fully sunny skies three days this month).  The poem came as I listened to the forecaster.  Thanks again for commenting.

I need a weather app that: I need a weather app that reminds me of this truth every day! With succinct, ascending and promising beauty you took me to a higher elevation. Just what I needed right now. God bless you!  

I love the way your words: I love the way your words gather to the lines that form the poem.