The rime has left the salt crystalized
upon the mouth of the sea, snow burns
its hands as the oceans seeks to bury itself
upon the shore, vagrant driftwood is tossed
to the beach, bearded by snow. Drifts fill branches,
creak, sway and spill out of the firs --
startling white foxes from their burrows
in the roots of these mist besotted evergreens.
The cold creeps into knuckles and the moon
gnaws on the door post of memories.
Caught in pinions, I migrate
where the sun makes me foolish
over-clothed. Takes me against
the currents, warm, to beach
on aits, listen for your footsteps
teasing the froth, your eyes seeking me out.
I always know when you speak to me,
deep in your heart, meaning fluid
a wash of eternitys falling from stars.
So comes the wind, curls and flows
where fingers rarely touch, a hushed brush
carrying you back to me. Stars blink awake,
the kisses come in showers, fall
through your heart, melt around your toes.
I have seen you walk the shore
gulls soar, sheer, fall into the sea.
Watched the tears collect along lashes
the fists clench and ball. Felt you
start to run. It continues to melt through
me long after your footsteps are erased.
The fractals on my windows blur the light.
The sun white, distant, a promise of a hope.
I place more wood on the fire.
The heat soon melts away the snow on the hearth.
This lifetime I was born hearing icicles grow,
instead of tangling my roots in your summers.
Think of me, often, when the sea flashes silver
your heart echoes with the wash of memories --
you don’t remember experiencing.
9:04 PM
12/31/07
Alexandria, VA
Author notes
Sometimes we wake up, become conscious that we have loved someone so many times before and sometimes, the timing sucked.
In a list
A contest entry
- A Deeper Love by poet2angels.
700 points, ended January 2, 2008, 16 entries
Honorable mention
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Give Me Your Best Prewrite Quickie by Heavenly Angel.
450 points, ended January 18, 2008, 11 entries
Bronze trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think, what it makes you feel, how you are moved.
Comments
1 - 58 of 58
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The fractals on my windows blur the light.
The sun white, distant, a promise of a hope.
I place more wood on the fire.
The heat soon melts away the snow on the hearth.
I'm not even gonna look to see if I've commented, just take this for what it's worth...you have captured Peace, Serenity, Happiness, Balance..
This is my Heaven, Welcome..
Make yourself at home..
Bring your family, we have more than enough..
Peace, my friend, this write is so good for my soul..
Jin
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Love is its own dimension and lifts us out of ourselves. We can become selfless when we were worrying about making it before. We can become heros when we were running away before. We think it is the love that does it. Love only clarifies who we are at the base of our being. We choose in the moment wether to live in the linear fears and inadequacies of the mind and its cohort the ego or place our faith (for the choice is always one of faith and belief) in the power of being present in the moment and being a whole and complete wonderous creation of God we discover that in others and speak to it.
Love Tom B.
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LOVELY!!! I mean my heart felt these words... and swallowed them... and even savored the taste. It is so devasting that fate often spins against our hearts pleas. Timing....
These words are divine. they are so meaningful. It touches deeply my love.
Love,
Mel
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I have been blessed with a large heart but I have only one body
Thanks for understanding so well.
Love, Tom B.
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Outstanding piece of poetry!
This totally blew me away
I love your wording and presentation!
Thank you so much for sharing!
Pen on! -
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Didn't comment because I didn't know if it was anon. Glad you found this worthy of a bronze. It is one of my current favorites. Love, Tom B.
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I always know when you speak to me,
deep in your heart, meaning fluid
a wash of eternitys falling from stars.
Yes, this stanza did speak to me. I love the mystical feel to this poem. I feel like you're addressing a phantom from your past, yes, but, that the phantom has become absorbed, and celebrated, as a benevolent force, by the world around you. Listening to the icicles grow has a nice touch, as if you know that you, too, will become a particular part of the landscape as well. I like the sense of honor you display, the awe.
Always uplifting, Tom.
Jin
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I believe we are made to love. Once it is a real love, a real connection, it stays with us for lifetimes. We may discover and old one while we are involved in our current life. I can be no less tender now, than then. But, I must honor and maintain my current commitments now for this is the life I am living.
Thanks for catching so much in so few words. It is nice to know that it is in the poem to be found by those who know how to listen.
Love, Tom B.
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This piece took my breath away. You started with a beautiful setting, depicted with utmost perfection and rooting itself in my mind. Then the romance comes-lovely, as usual! I loved your usage of personification, especially when the moon gnaws on the metaphorical doorpost of memories...lovely. Love has no conscience for time, for we have revolved our lives around time, moreso than the gift of love. If we wish to truly let love take us in its arms, we must allow it to make us forget time.
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Ah, my friend the mind is a linear beast and like a beginnin middle and end. The heart works in a larger series of dimension and is convinced that forever is where everything begins.
Glad you enjoyed this piece. I love the tensions and questions and layers that it contains. You become wiser everytime I hear you share they way one of my pieces touches you.
Love, Tom B.
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and yet the higher self forgets nothing, waiting for the days time, this is a wonderful write i especially enjoyed the fractal feeling of the window looking out unto the past of love for the beauty of the now,
w chocolate coated frozen watermelon
-jas
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We never know until we do, how the swirl of the energy that brings us together lets us touch again. We dance on our head of a pin not knowing the angels we dance with as we mutter in the dark halls of our mental muggery about the cost of tomorrow. We wake on occasion and in the thunder of our squawls find we have touched again and again.
Love, Tom B.
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strange how the heart find a love
that never fulley blossened. and it weighs on us through life when we are alone. Where is that life wondering about us?????...mac
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The heart heeds truth, while the mind argues visions of reality. The spirit carries lifetimes with it and we aquire the weights and measures of our cultures as a birth right. We are not alone in wondering how love can be realized when we are far far from the shores of its gifts.
Peace & LIght,
Tom B.
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Outstanding
I loved how you created a sense of winter and the language was stunning. This has a modern feel. I liked how you painted the landscape before our eyes. Over-all an inspirational poem with a great use of imagery. Thanks for posting.
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Thank you. I wanted to bring the chill and coldness home to the heart. I believe in poetry as an oral art, so write with that in mind. I wrote so we can hear that the heart never lets go, no matter how great the distance.
Love, Tom B.
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Poems come alive when read out loud - they read silently so different than when the spoken word is used. What a different a voice makes! Wonderful verbiage you have used in these lines - think we all love the feel of the words on our lips as we say them out loud, with the right inflections and and gestures, this would be a marvel to listen to. Such an interesting outlook you share with us in these verses.
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Very wise comment. I write to be read aloud. My experiences as a young man taught me that poetry on the whole is an oral art. There are haikus, minimalist styles, concrete poetry that are for silent contemplaiton and are a beautiful art form in their own right. But, I write for the voice to spin its magic upon the listener. Thank you for your comment and the perspicuity in your understanding of my style.
Love, Tom B.
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Bring Me The Winner...
...the one beating you out Tom because honestly, if I had the time I could sit and read your poetry all day not out of just want but need. I needs (yes, incorrect enlish)...I simply need to feel the way I do
when I read your writing. YES! (Please keep me posted
on a publication - Please)
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Incredible compliment. I simply want to capture the dance of being, senses and aliveness as it works its way through the human in us. Please come and read anytime and celebrate the magnificence we can all be.
Love, Tom B.
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original..sensitive..intelligent
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Thanks. I have my moments
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Do you mean rine, or do I just not know what rime is? Maybe, because I don't know what aits are either. You misspelled eternities.
I think what we want and what we need are often juxtaposed in some fashion. Yet, we do sometimes find our fantasy girl. Best of luck -
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rime: 1. frost 2: an accumulation of granular ice tufts on the windward side of exposed objects that is formed from supercooled fog or cloud and built out directly against the wind. 3: CRUST, INCRUSTATION
ait: little island
I do not use words to befuddle only to refine and define, like shading with color and recognizing the sound, connotations and denotations of the word. Our unwillingness to acknowledge how our wants and needs shape our lives and how we are greater then they are: shapes our lives.
She is no fantasy.
Peace & Light
Tom B.
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Great imagery here, very good. I love the flow and feeling of connection, which I recognize. Very direct and poignant.
There is some odd structure going on, and some over-flowery lines here and there, which I can't work out and could worry about more but I guess you know why that is like it is, and to be honest I can't bring myself to care too much, because on the whole it works!
...On the other hand, stanza 2, line 5, 'aits'? what is that?
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ait: a little island
Glad you enjoyed this piece. I spent a fair time learnning the power of lyricism in presentation. This is designed for public preformance. Part of the structure is there to clue me to change voice and presence as I preform it.
Peace & Light
Tom B. -
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Ah, all is clear on the form side. Yes, an islet, or little isle, in a river or lake; an eyot. I should've looked it up myself!
Thanks my friend
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no harm, no foul
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This was great!
I really enjoyed this. The imagery is bright, and vivid, just as your sentiment. The flow is fluid and it reads easily and smoothly.
The only thing I had problems with is the first stanza. It seems almost too verbose at times. But other than that, I thought this was perhaps one of the best reads I've seen here in a long time. Keep up the good work! -
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Thanks for the insight and thoughts. The door opens with a picture and then out of the picture the emotions are allowed to rise to the fore. The tension is maintained by the contrast in the pictorial states. The last stanza brings the two contrasting winter and summer visions and removes the congnitive disonance and opens a door for the thoughts to travel on.
Thanks again for sharing your pleasure.
Peace & Light, Tom B.
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I just love it x And those showered kisses melting around your toes. Yum. My toes curled all the way through this one!! Ty. sj
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Often, when we allow ourselves, we can feel the deeper connections. The path to our awakening lies outside all the stories we have created. Glad you could sense all the energy this poem contains. All gifts are celebrated. May your love be vibrant and carry you past all the promises that would be denied to the land of your blossoming.
Love, Tom B.
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Such amazing beauty in this write my dear friend...
I adore the imagery...
Congrats on your HM....
A delightful piece to conclude this year..
Peace and many blessings
~A~
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I, too, am pleased with the imagery that woke up through my words. It was a nice ending gift for a year of many surprises and new discoveries. May this coming year be just as rich. Thanks for all you have shared with me.
Love, Tom B.
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This is excellent...
So filled with emotion and wonderful language and emotion...
Brilliant poem!
Lynda
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Thanks for the HM. Glad you enjoyed my piece. I just wanted to explore the seasons and separation and life times of being. May this New Year be one of awakening and splendor. Love, Tom B.
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the beauty of your words keeps me speechless ...
I don't know what it is that moves me most ... it's not so much the words as the subtle space between them ... making my heart smile and bestowing a feeling of silent bliss ...
thank you for such a masterful piece of poetry
wishing you a blessed year 2008
maa
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Life and death, Love in the light of separation, the journey from famine to feast and back again without feeling hungry are all part of the spirits growth and lessons learned.
Glad you enjoyed the poem. I hope, that as it touched you, it opened a doorway or two and increased your vision, at least refined it a bit. As lifetimes pour through one's soul in the moments of awakening, I find that I let go more and more, not like a ship cast on the sea without oar, but more, as if I am a bird upon the wind and the wind holding the bird.
Thanks for taking the time to comment and share your thoughts. It is always a blessing to the heart when we take time to share our joys.
Love, Tom B.
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If we could always remember the beautiful memories the way you describe them then timing wouldn't seem so off. It would just be a moment to cherish and be glad we had one. Love, C
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Memories, visions, speaking a language of symbols to try to capture the unexpressible long enough for my readers to experience it. Thanks for letting me know I succeed a little bit.
Love, Tom B.
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It's been so long since I've been able to walk on the beach, but I relate to the images as if I could breathe them...and they freeze like still frames.
"rime has left the salt crystalized...This lifetime I was born hearing icicles grow" How is it that we long for what we do not remember?
I found this entirely beautiful in the silver thaw of your words. ~ Karen
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You hear things that no one else does. Glad you could hear the struggle. We ache for moments that barely glimmer and dream of a universe with out want. We can have it when we stop listening to an ego that only knows desire.
Love, Tom B.
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excellent writing
Wow! this to me is the balance of life, the measure between our birth & death...how we struggle with cycle of life. In all relationships there is that need of being together to love, please each other. This poem is full of your art..."words we sometimes regret often cause us pain. A swollen ego is a time bomb that always explodes." You captured the magic of time and time unchained.......................novy
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You sound like my wife.
We presence ourselves. We stand in a moment and experience our Being and relatedness. But I know to well "the finger pointed at the moon is not the moon"
I hope to transport my reader take them to a place where they experience it like the first time and my words are not as important as the immediacy of their experience it.
Love, Tom B.
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"This lifetime I was born hearing icicles grow,
instead of tangling my roots in your summers.
Think of me, often, when the sea flashes silver
your heart echoes with the wash of memories --
you don't remember experiencing."
What a perfect ending to a splendidly written poem. I feel the cold and warmth in these words. I agree that there are times when we love, and have loved...times when we are off and on in decision making. Life is full of balanced and unbalanced seasons. I do believe the quake of this New Year '08 is a sign of "new beginnings". The number seven is completion, eight begins again. Life cycles go 'round and 'round, the same as love. Excellent work dear man. The best to you in both contests.
Much Love Always
Renee ♥ † ♥
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Sue calls it a struggle between life and death, I didn't write anything so grand, but then, she might be right. This plays with separation and union and the way the seasons play across the soul. This reaches into the energy of timelessness and shows that as long as our egos voice themselves it only becomes more complicated
Thanks for your review. I always treasure your understandings even if I firmly keep my tongue planted in my cheek.
Love, Tom B.
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Love comes to us at different times and in many forms. There are some that come to us and leave and we let them go freely without remorse or regret...but then there are those that we cling to forever. They live within us and become a part of who we are, who we become. Few people can find this love..To me, this piece depicts that type of love..One that lives within the confines of our being.
Much love
Noreen
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Lately, I seem to be collect vistors from past lives The more I presence myself the more I draw in the world. Or is it I am shed of my worldliness
You are right, of course, this speaks to the way we become layered in time and must awaken to being and how it speaks to us both in love and mating so we become entwined and when free of the games implicit in the ego, set free. Thanks for stopping by and sharing of yourself.
Love, Tom B.
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"I always know when you speak to me,
deep in your heart, meaning fluid
a wash of eternity's falling from stars."
I have always related to metaphors of the sea, for some reason. Odd, considering I grew up in the middle of America...although I was always near a lake, a river, a stream or a creek. When I finally saw the real ocean, I was humbled ~ awestruck ~ by its majesty. You've honored its magnificence with this piece, my Friend. Good luck in Lynda's & Marion's contests, Poet. Happy New Year to us all. 
Wanda
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My wife calls it a struggle between life and death. I can see how she can say that. I don't hold it as quite that majestic and see it simply as a struggle between separation and desire for togetherness.
I understand your feelings all to well. While the child in me greets the ocean with glee, the spirit in me is often humbled just to be in the presence of it wonder.
Welcome to the New Year,
Tom B.
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"...vagrant driftwood is tossed
to the shore, bearded by snow." One of the most descriptive and beautiful lines of this poem...at least, to me. The entire poem is exceptional in its imagery, Tom...and the underlying emotion, quite touching.
Love, Lane
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This is one that grew into place, I just followed the path as it showed me the way. I love the imagery in this one as well. The line you mention is the one that gave me the hardest time to come up with and left me the most unsure. Glad to hear it worked so well.
Welcome to the New Year and all the magic it brings,
Tom B.
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Like an echo of ghost's, sometime those memories don't even seem real??? They are more like the apparitions of dead relationships, come to call our attention to the present for those lucky enough to get another chance... at love!!!
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There are those memories and I know the quicksand they quickly become. Then there are the moments when I know I have known someone in other lifetimes. These are far more seductive and create the awarness of connection that has nothing to do of this world.
I wanted to capture and deal with the ache of separation and reflect it in different seasons and weather. It is all about love, I know. But, I did not want to mention that word in the poem. I, just, let it be understood and you got it right away
Welcome to the New Year,
Tom B.
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I know this by heart. The images ares stunnign, wanting, desperate almost in their need to grasp and know why... we are both winter's want and summer's weep amidst such beauty that it breaks our hearts over and over and over again.
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I wanted to capture the ache and yearn without complaint or whine. These are the naderings of an ego seeking attention. But the ache and yearn are no less real and need to be honored and treated with dignity so they can be healed.
It is difficult to take the ego's need to identify and possess everything as somehow a reflection of itself. Still, I think it is a worthy task and try to reflect in my poems both a man's humanity and honor the truth as I can.
Thanks for sharing with me your thoughts.
Welcome to the New Year,
Tom B.
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omg, I am not even sure where to start with this one. It is beyond amazing. I love the descriptiveness and the wording you chose: i.e. "vagrant driftwood is tossed to the shore, bearded by snow"
You paint a picture with your words and you give the painting emotion. This is wonderful.
"Stars blink awake,
the kisses come in showers, fall
through your heart, melt around your toes"
beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. -
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Welcome as my first reviewer of the new year. What a lovely way to begin. I wanted to catch the sense of separation and the feeling of the winter it brings. I still sought to use my images and symbols of how love touches and communicates beyond words.
Thanks for being so taken by the descriptions of the world that turns wether we turn with it or not. For catching how the world can echo our feelings and bring us into a oneness that makes love a powerful resource to our being.
Happy New Year,
Tom B.
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