Cheers Sharron - I had a feeling you would be a bit of a black sheep too - Ive always felt like I was on the outside looking in, or more accurately, the only one under the looking glass! Perfect conditions for a writer to form I feel ;)
Yes, for me, it is an ennui that comes from entering adulthood in the sixties, I think. When the era was over, it left an unshakable melancholy in its wake.
Exactly K.C - as writers, we are always encouraged to describe our experiences with ALL of our senses, but like the bat in the poem, that experiences a murmuration that is only copies or echoes of itself, we cannot always trust what we "see" - for that, we may need the testimony of the many, the collective representations of reality i.e. the starlings point of view.
I often think that in another 20 years things will have changed so much (again) that I'll be hit with another front of hiraeth! Of course - there are some things that are gone that will remain missed for all our lives - cheers Mike!
There is so much to love here, so many wonderful lines, murmurations if you will, individually lovely but taken all together a brilliant miracle of words. loved this.
Thanks Brion - there are plenty more available to read, I think I have almost 40 publications now, mostly poetry - and there will be plenty more in the days to come!
So much to relate to in this soulful piece, Conor.
"...I miss the feeling of missing something that's no longer here" ( or missing something that never even was )
"... the nadir of the self..." ( the only solace in being at the nadir is, of course, that the only direction now is UP)
... and I can't remember when I stopped being a starling to become a bat who longed to be a starling again ... ( no, me neither...)
Cheers Sharron - I had a feeling you would be a bit of a black sheep too - Ive always felt like I was on the outside looking in, or more accurately, the only one under the looking glass! Perfect conditions for a writer to form I feel ;)
Yes, for me, it is an ennui that comes from entering adulthood in the sixties, I think. When the era was over, it left an unshakable melancholy in its wake.
I can't even begin to imagine what growing up in California in the 60s might have been like - but it must've been something else!
San Francisco, 1967. It was nothing, if not liberating. But freedom brings its own set of problems.
I think it was something else everywhere!!
I'm a child of the 80s but I think the 60s changed the world for all of us Jill - what a time to be alive!
This line reveals the writer: "When did seeing come to rely
on opening a pair of eyes?" Writers see with their souls.
Exactly K.C - as writers, we are always encouraged to describe our experiences with ALL of our senses, but like the bat in the poem, that experiences a murmuration that is only copies or echoes of itself, we cannot always trust what we "see" - for that, we may need the testimony of the many, the collective representations of reality i.e. the starlings point of view.
"I miss the feeling
of missing something that's no longer here."
Man, I felt that!!
I often think that in another 20 years things will have changed so much (again) that I'll be hit with another front of hiraeth! Of course - there are some things that are gone that will remain missed for all our lives - cheers Mike!
There is so much to love here, so many wonderful lines, murmurations if you will, individually lovely but taken all together a brilliant miracle of words. loved this.
Thanks Douglas, that's very generous. I went to town in this one, more than usual - a murmuration of one indeed!
I am grateful I stumbled across this. Wow! Nice job.
Thanks Brion - there are plenty more available to read, I think I have almost 40 publications now, mostly poetry - and there will be plenty more in the days to come!
Today you hit chords with murmurations!
Thanks Jill!
"a cold fumbling rain, thundering onto the paper,
humbling the black ink back to its living state;
this moribund procession of words weeping
towards each other for comfort; funneling
into communal confession, the booth:
the blotting paper of reflection."
So fucking good man.
Cheers Henry - and for the re-stack too - good to see you back sharing your fine work again on Substack btw - hope you've been well.
To flying in the great and grand murmuration! Well done
I'll see you there B . . . Cheers!
see you there!