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Once

Just once I'd like to feel something unmixed,
Simple.
Clear again. Ambivalence is
Here again,
My most constant friend.
It's how I know I'm getting older,
All that experience and passion
Growing colder,
Each feeling and emotion
Just drowning
In the ocean
Or in more primordial seas.

All those things I felt
Once
For the first time, so fiercely,
Now mere repetition,
Almost tersely
Truncated, curtailed,
Disembodied
Only talked about;
Sensation's gone
Walkabout.
Numbness is the state of play
Indifference comes here every day
To visit my shell.

And the time
Long gone
I wandered in those cedar-woods
And drank from a cold spring
While the sun beat down on my bare arms
Surrounded by silence
And stumbled on that wagon wheel
Abandoned by the stream

And there were stones there
Other lives;
Other husbands, other wives,
Other sorrows and secrets
And beds and births and cries,
And the remnants of walls.
I remember it all;

And that boy who found those things
And wondered and dreamed
Has travelled too far
Or so it often seems.

Just once,
Dear God,
I'd like it to come home again, to me,
Break free again.
Just once.



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Comments

1 - 9 of 9
  • SmileFromGlasgow
    July 11

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    Absolutely beautiful. One of my favorite poems I've read on here. Certainly one of the better ones I've read of recent.

    "In the ocean
    Or in more primordial seas." For some reason I find this syntactically awkward. I also find it just...I don't know, it took me out of the poem for a second, which I didn't like.

    Other than that, I really, really liked this poem. 8/10.

    "Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul."
    - Samuel Ullman

  • Wisdom 1
    September 2, 2008
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    Adaptive

    I so much appreciate the adaptation of the age despite that truthful to how I know, you arent old. Keep writing Riv.

  • big river
    March 1, 2008

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    "WOW",THX FOR SHARING!I LIKE THE "DARK"AND "EXPRESSION OF PAIN IN THE DEEP OF THE HEART".I DETECTED A BREEZE OF COMPASSION FOR OTHERS YET TO FACE THE CEDAR WOODS. "PEACE

  • evelynxxoo
    February 13, 2008
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    I thought it sad and full of regrets things you maybe never got to do i loved it

  • Riveralex
    February 8, 2008
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    Thanks for your incisive comment Wiz - this is such a big site I don't get to meet people unless we connect somehow - i look forward to reading you - best R

  • Wisdom 1
    February 8, 2008

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    simple heading

    like the heading the theme too stands out for what it is intended(a return to the arms of comfort just once)Riv. that was nice


  • Man of Harlech silver member
    November 14, 2007

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    I certainly related to the whole of this poem. It has an easy flow while maintaing a very centered direction. I am pleased to know about you, and will read more of your poms.

1 - 9 of 9