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Tuesday 24 December 2013

Castaway


.


[Untitled]: photo by :+:+:+:+: (Kaometet), 18 December 2013

casting the pain, the regret, the fear, the anger
away, as though
they belonged to a stranger
watching from the windblown shore
a distant sinking ship




[Untitled]: photo by :+:+:+:+: (Kaometet), 15 December 2013
 


[Untitled]: photo by :+:+:+:+: (Kaometet), 19 December 2013
 

[Untitled]: photo by :+:+:+:+: (Kaometet), 20 December 2013

7 comments:

Poet Red Shuttleworth said...

Wishfully... and against the where-to-next? Yes, to be a castaway... yet embraced.

ACravan said...

as though
they belonged to a stranger

There’s so much in those words. Sometimes I achieve “stranger to myself” status effortlessly; unfortunately, the stranger I see is filled with terrible qualities. I’ve had other moments where I’ve felt more “self-less” in a positive way. I know that never lasts and when you try to describe the feeling to someone, even someone who’s apparently sympathetic, you provoke disbelief or even barely stifled outrage. This collection of images accompanying the poem is obviously unbelievable in easy to experience, hard to describe ways. The third one down of bright, but blurry and diffused lights, reminds me of an ecstatic moment walking with my daughter in a late November snowstorm in Florence, oddly enough out for ice cream. I felt as fundamentally alone then as ever, but meaningfully and happily connected also. I’ve come to despise snow, but I’d relive Florence in that storm forever and ever. I get the feeling that no one is doing too well at the moment. It Can Happen Here and it’s happening.

Hazen said...

That first photograph resembles a washed out Dali, as though the color were drained away and we find ourselves staring at the dregs of the year. Venus, though, is beautiful in the early evening sky. Feelings seem to have a life of their own.

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

watching from the windblown shore
a distant sinking ship

shades of Caspar David Friedrich in black and white, especially the stranger in that third one. . .

Nora said...

Oh Tom, thank you. I needed this today.

Mose23 said...

Much resonance here.

TC said...

Thanks to friends for the good company; the last few weeks have, as the saying goes and as that remarkable top photo appears to make palpable, pretty much blown this particular stranger away.

The companion-in-a-storm to this poem, stranded offshore during the Santa Hiatus, is up now:

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