AWKWARDLY DRAWN STILL LIFE

With magnificent indifference
The world swirls and eddies
And life ebbs and flows
Around my crusty head
But still this radiant illusion
Springs eternally hopeful
And leads us by the nose

Times of mysteries past flow
As the northern rain washes the days away
Into slick and glimmering colours
Without earthly reason
And this late in the season
Daffodils fade and die
And butterflies won't fly
In an awkward silent stillness

                                   By Phil Roberts

Reviews

[charlie]

Perhaps not so awkwardly drawn after all, Phil. Your first stanza could almost parallel a van gough painting, while the second reads like "watching the wheels", only the wheels are inevitably coming to a stand still. Trade winds become doldrums and time ossifies. The spirit, if it doesn't dissolve, turns to turbidite.

What comes to my mind...the curious thing about this kind of shifting dynamic, the loss of animism, is how some spiritual practitioners wilfully seek a stillness in order to unlock an intrinsic flow. What is haunting about your poem is both the reverse image of this, and the idea that the intrinsic flow may ultimately prove temporal anyhow, no matter what way you come to it...

It is a magnificent, if dire, reverie.

[Phil Roberts]

Thank you so much, Charlie. As always, I appreciate your words and your analysis is spot on.