"presentiment" poems
764
Presentiment—is that long Shadow—on the Lawn—
Indicatives that Suns go down—
The Notice to the startled Grass
That Darkness—is about to pass—
3.6k
The crunchy Autumn leaf changes its mood once again.
A crisp green transforms into a burnt auburn glow.
I sink into my kingdom of leaves,
underneath the grand sugar maple tree.
The brisk wind pinches my cheeks into rosey swirls.
My breath leaves my body in a thick white fog,
and I lose myself in my surroundings.
Suddenly crystal drops of water fall from the sky,
slide down my face,
and make a home in my hair.
The grey sky bleeds its way into my eyes.
I sit and let it all pour down on me.
Let it wash me away into a presentiment abyss.
The seasons will keep changing.
I will keep changing.
Change can be a very beautiful thing.
Nov 20, 2012
Nov 20, 2012 at 1:23 PM UTC
"Oh father, let us hence--for hark,
A fearful murmur shakes the air.
The clouds are coming swift and dark:--
What horrid shapes they wear!
A winged giant sails the sky;
Oh father, father, let us fly!"
"Hush, child; it is a grateful sound,
That beating of the summer shower;
Here, where the boughs hang close around,
We'll pass a pleasant hour,
Till the fresh wind, that brings the rain,
Has swept the broad heaven clear again."
"Nay, father, let us haste--for see,
That horrid thing with horned brow,--
His wings o'erhang this very tree,
He scowls upon us now;
His huge black arm is lifted high;
Oh father, father, let us fly!"
"Hush, child;" but, as the father spoke,
Downward the livid firebolt came,
Close to his ear the thunder broke,
And, blasted by the flame,
The child lay dead; while dark and still,
Swept the grim cloud along the hill.
1.5k
A stone terrain waits
A landscape deserted
Devoid of real
Or imagined explorations
For it turns inward
At a tangent that
Precludes inquiry
It has an articulation
Of slow deliberate movements
Where particularized
Geology has painted it
Cut off and disconnected
By an estrangement of creation
Other existences only serve
To magnify its sense of isolation
Its blank uncaring non-geometric
Dimensions of observable
Unquantifiable location is obscure
And unrealised
Producing an immediate
Initiated sensory experience
Of unreleased silent appraisal
But why does it wait?
What for
Does it anticipate or foresee
Some expected prediction
Of apocalyptic presentiment
Is it recalling color?
Or is it experiencing
The present like floating in a dream
Alas there is no clue
To its tilted yet frozen expectancy
A stone terrain waits
Feb 8, 2013
Feb 8, 2013 at 4:29 PM UTC
As the Sun has its place
In the clear, halcyon sky
Your mind resides here
Please don't resist to comply
Intercept each divagated thought
Interconnect with my waves
Vibe with my presentiment
Upon each other, we're slaves
"Hooked" on each other's hooks
As our conscious rocks and cradles
Sharing minds as we flutter
Animated fantasies, but no fables
I think the way you think
You coast adjacent to my vibe
Our mental surrounds each other's
Mine and yours, a dear circumscribe
We entwine as a tightly woven braid
Entangled upon a common bond
We savor of our intuitive thoughts
Your every move, I'm surely fond
Enriched with pleasurable closure
In summer's embrace, we wallow
In this psychological playground
My angel, your position is hallow
We're two minds that amalgamate
Gratified with not one discrepancy
Only our mutual brains keep subtle
A deep, infrangible, sweet telepathy..
© Michael P. Smith
Mar 30, 2013
Mar 30, 2013 at 2:20 AM UTC
Our hands held each other
Yet, I missed you anyway
Apr 15, 2017
Apr 15, 2017 at 3:26 PM UTC
I.
This is a poet of the river lands,
a lowdown man of the deepest
depth of the valley, where gravity gathers
the waters, the poisons, the trash,
where light comes late and leaves early.
From the window of his small room
the lowdown poet looks out. He watches
the river for ripples, flashes, signs
of beings rising in the undersurface dark,
or lightly swimming upon the flow,
or, for a minnow, descending the deeps
of the air to enter and shatter
forever their momentary reflections,
for the river is a place passing
through a passing place.
The poet, his window, and his poems
are creatures of the shore that the river
gnaws, dissolves, and carries away.
He is a tree of a sort, rooted
in the dark, aspiring to the light,
dependent on both. His poems
are leavings, sheddings, gathered
from the light, as it has come,
and offered to the dark, which he believes
must shine with sight,
with light, dark only to him.
II.
Times will come as they must,
by necessity or his wish, when he leaves
his enclosure and his window,
his homescape of house and garden,
barn and pasture, the incarnate life
of his desire, thought, and daily work.
His grazing animals look up
to watch in silence as he departs.
He sets out at times without even
a path or any guidance other than knowledge
of the place and himself as they were
in time already past. He goes among trees,
climbing again the one hill of his life.
With his hand full of words he goes
into the wordless, wording it barely
in time as he passes. One by one he places
words, balancing on each
as on a small stone in the swift flow
in his anxious patience until
the next arrives, until he has come
at last again into presentiment
of the Real, the wholly real in its grand
composure, for which as before
he knows no word. And here again
he must stop. Here by luck or grace he may
find rest, which he has been seeking
all along. Sometimes by the time’s flaws
and his own, he fails. And then
by luck or grace he will be given
another day to try again, to go maybe
yet farther before again he must stop.
He is a gatherer of fragments, a cobbler
of pieces. Piece by piece he tells
a story without end, for in the time
of this world no end can come.
It is the story of eternity’s shining,
much shadowed, much put off,
in time. And time, however long, falls short.
Wendell Berry's most recent books include It All Turns on Affection: The Jefferson Lecture and Other Essays, New Collected Poems, and A Place in Time, the newest volume in his Port William series.
Jun 30, 2014
Jun 30, 2014 at 11:30 AM UTC
love and self respect twined into the rope
surrounded by a toxic cloud of vagueness.
I am the riff-raff of my own heart
my own dishonesty to myself has increased the remorseless presentiment in my soul
my reactions drowned in vain
as he whispered the words that i have so often used on all the wrong faces
my heart was taped together with duct tape
...still some pieces were missing
my heart was not "ripped in half"
it was set a blaze, tortured and hung
left looking in the mirror at its own worthless reflection...
...how can a heart like that ever love again?
Feb 5, 2014
Feb 5, 2014 at 9:26 PM UTC
Imposing despondence annexing hypnogogic state escapes;
dominating
Precariously constructed walls;
stifling
Presentiment projected, callous shadow castles;
towering
Looming structures of concentrated contempt;
ensnared
A solitary luminescent casement;
revealing radiant retreat
Evanescent relief...
Enticing evacuation from encasement;
a Dusty Miller
Flourishing amongst debris and ruin
The first sign of life...
in years
Jan 4, 2014
Jan 4, 2014 at 7:05 PM UTC
love and self respect twined into the rope
surrounded by a toxic cloud of vagueness.
I am the riff-raff of my own heart
my own dishonesty to myself has increased the remorseless presentiment in my soul
my reactions drowned in vain
as he whispered the words that i have so often used on all the wrong faces
my heart was taped together with duct tape
...still some pieces were missing
my heart was not "ripped in half"
it was set a blaze, tortured and hung
left looking in the mirror at its own worthless reflection...
...how can a heart like that ever love again?
Feb 5, 2014
Feb 5, 2014 at 9:25 PM UTC
With baffling reticence these limbs pour--
were they the scream of their creation...
space would about-face.
A clarion call issued them as stars to
constellate a soul.
Secure a God's temperament--and of the
mind given them, what to derive therefrom?
Their wound is not wide from their reticence,
the presentiment of their journey is a steady
creeping...the inching forth of termless conscription.
As pastoral confines bled out the lamb by the
Hand of necessity, these limbs have so
gathered to impart their sacrifice.
A single push of an unfathomable nature sees
them thus and thus.
What center they contrive's amiss...one
cannot take hold the Agony and Ecstasy
handed by One so great.
Feb 20, 2016
Feb 20, 2016 at 11:11 AM UTC
Imperative perception
It was all far fetched, a time when I searched myself in others
No one can ever give me the moment of clarity and serenity
An eternity of peace within oneself, an embody of higher self
This place of ultimate truth and surreal objectification
A reflection of timeless lapses, the laps of completeness
The storms were a taboo, the recurrent flying unquietness
The un-resolving trips and flares of unpolarised magnetic currents
The escape to pristine moments, prestige throughs and peaks
A vision from the drowning sea, me sinking in the whirlpool
I mirrored my own reflection to yours, my 'I' to "you", your 'I" to "me"
Melodious Creeks
The moment called now is my only lullaby I can hear
A whisper so harmonised and crystallised deep in the seabed
A candle light of moment of truth in a rotating crystal ball
The chaos in the jungle have escaped to the peaks of the mountain
Uninformed lands with uniformed pebbles, the shattered glasses
Demons that stood ***** as they pierced and taunted a being
Why did it take so long?
Lets go the springs and streams of pain, the unending past
It's not a feeling, or logic, its a way of human existence
An entwinement of anthems embellished with peace
Presentiment
***** the barred barricades for me to see your pastures
I can feel the darkness that embodies your soul and mind
A thunder in the unending jungle, jiggling in kingdoms
Reject my sharp vision, I cry your tears as you do mine
I stare at your blur as you submerge in the deep waters
The blackening tunnels with no escape reject my eyes
The icy layers squeezing to escape in your sorrows
The narrowed aisles have become the only island you cruise
The trajectory of our blood realigned in our future sins
Found self?
Listen to the strings adjoining in the basements of the cliffs
The line balancing on the centrifugal pump as it impels to shrouds
Of choices?
Predetermination and judgment of other as I lost a piece of my time
In this territory, I stand at the borderline of my devotion in battle
Holding my rifle and connecting to life and all; me a solider of love
Parading in the landscapes of inhibitions and thought processes
A soul I hold is my only liberation to live fully and autonomously
Eyes wide open, mouth wide ajar as we rise and survive doing our best!
Feb 11, 2018
Feb 11, 2018 at 8:59 AM UTC
you could store water
in the wells dipped deep
into my neck where
your grip once was.
your hold is too strong,
its weeds choke my lungs,
steals my own words
to replace with your own.
I was your garden
and I felt your hands
uproot my ugly, but you
took the flowers away too.
I stand now, an arboretum
of almosts and painful potential.
you leave me barren so
I have nothing to offer,
nothing of my own.
I wait to claim back
myself, all that I have,
and I am almost ready.
Aug 15, 2016
Aug 15, 2016 at 11:48 PM UTC
When hardened hearts ignore the plaintive tears
Of those who are invisible yet present,
They disregard the strugglers' hopes and fears
And make a situation more unpleasant.
Many suffer hazardous conditions
And work that earns a pittance but still brings
A lifestyle that won't **** their true ambitions.
How dare we think that they all live like kings!
Imagine living daily with the terror
Or harsh presentiment--with stress and pain--
Of knowing that despite abuse or error,
Your hands are tied, for you cannot complain.
Your life becomes a sad catch-22.
To keep on going is all that you can do.
Imagine fleeing poverty and war
And frightful acts of cruel persecution.
Your life at least is better than before,
But you await a permanent solution.
Your kids are now American at heart,
But jobs and college cause much consternation.
You work two jobs; you try to do your part;
Yet there's the constant threat of deportation.
When people turn their heads and look away,
A blaze of cruel injustice wildly rages.
The ones affected most can have no say
In how to fix what's NOT worked well for ages.
Solutions lacking heart are cold and numbing
And demonstrate how ugly we're becoming.
- by Bob B (2-23-17)
Feb 23, 2017
Feb 23, 2017 at 12:39 PM UTC
She has always had a suspicion
that the boy was on a secret mission
In addition
She had a presentiment because of their
heated arguments and how they could never nod in assent
And how he was never quiet
and just so defiant
The uncertainty she felt whenever he watched her as she persistently walked down the halls
Or when she sluggishly sat in class
and as he stared at her lovingly it
made her feel uneasy
When she turns to look at him disgusted
she sees just how flustered he look
All these suspicions it was like a six sense
but she could never suspect
or come to accept
the event of him loving her
Jul 20, 2016
Jul 20, 2016 at 7:29 PM UTC
In my hands rest words I couldn’t bring myself to eat
they rose up my throat like a tree roots itself into the ground
I plucked the leaves from my mouth
and wrote my simple query,
“who told me I could not stay?”
“who told me I must go away?
then left them in the air to float
amongst quandaries of maple and oak
wrapping my head in black webbing
and taking off my shoes as a presentiment
and a gesture of compliance
as I wait for the day
Feb 24, 2017
Feb 24, 2017 at 12:08 AM UTC