A Single Atom

I see a shooting star, traverse the full-moon.

Like a jungle bushfire, raging out of sight.

I feel the heat of midday, smoothering the night.

Like a warm body, inside her tomb.

I see the dawn, without the golden sun.

Like a Lyrebird, singing all out of tune.

I hear the morning rain, without a cloud in the sky.

Like yesterdays floods, leaving her high and dry.

I see a sandy beach, awash by a tidal wave.

Like a burning desert, water is her grave.

I fill lonely sheets, with empty dreams.

Like a dark chasms’ irrelevant beams.

I see a summer leaf, wilted by a frosty Autumn.

Like an unwatered orchid, opening to an old anthem.

I feel like a splintered heart, inside a single atom.

Like a snakes dead skin, her rejected emblem.

 

Ivor Steven.

 

Published by

ivor20

G'day, and welcome to my blog site. My name is Ivor Steven, I live in Geelong, Australia. I'm an ex-industrial chemist, and a retired plumber, and a former Carer of my wife(Carole), for 30 years, who suffered from severe MS. I Write poetry about those personal thoughts, throughout and beyond my life as a Carer. I've been blogging for over 2 years, and writing poems for 19 years. Of course a lot of my poems are about my favourite subject Carole, but since I've been blogging my writings have become quite varied, humourous, mystical, observational, and even a few monster/horror poems.

67 thoughts on “A Single Atom”

    1. Thanks Karen, I’m so glad you thought my words were beautiful, it’s a poem/piece that I’ve been working at, on and off, for over 4 years, and wow, this it, finally…… I’ve never done this before, mostly my poems are formed quite quickly

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    1. You’re probably right, for me the poem was started at the end of era, and the beginning of a new one, I was confused and mostly unsure of my feelings, hence the “almost”, and words took so long to unjumble, I suppose the poem is almost a finished one now !!

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      1. Ivor ich liebe deine poesie!
        Ich fülle einsame Blätter mit leeren Träumen …. so schön geschrieben.
        Schön, aber so traurig !!!! .. Ich würde es vorziehen: Ich fülle einsame Blätter mit 1000 Träume! Nun, aber ich kann verstehen, dass echte Poesie so sein muss!

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      3. ohh, sorry ivor, this happens when getting too tired..here in english:
        I love your poetry! I fill lonely sheets, with empty dreams …. So beautifully written. Nice, but so sad !!!! .. I would prefer: I fill lonely leaves with 1000 dreams! Well, but I can understand that real poetry must be so! And I understood that there is a deep massage inside…

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      4. Thanks Special One, sad, but not all our dreams are happy ones. “1000 Dreams”, reminds me
        of Leonard Cohen’s, “A Thousand Kisses Deep”, a lovely poem/song, look it up, one of my
        favourite pieces by the maestro.

        Liked by 1 person

      5. yes Ivor, I just read it. Well, my 1000dreams, are meant to become true. Sorry but I did not like cohan´s poem. Such poem hurts me…

        Liked by 1 person

      6. Leonard Cohen’s works can be very deep and emotional, I understand your feelings. He’s a man that suffered from depression, most of his life, and wrote a lot about those complex thoughts.

        Liked by 1 person

      7. In fact, all this sad poems, I read here are all very beautiful,Ivor. Because they are very sensitive and delicate. I have to read them always twice, three times or more, and reflect the comments to recognize what there is written between the lines. Mostly you can find some hope, appeals, or changes in a little better.
        I think I just have to move some of my sensibility away from me to others….I should not feeling always affected myself, when I read something like this, and I should beeing more careful, how other people could feel about, what I´m writing….hahaha…”just” is not the right word, this is an purpose, which is quite hard.

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      8. I’m understanding what you are saying, and I too get very emotional, and I’m quite a sensitive guy. And that’s why I write, for self Therapy and the release of my pent up thoughts. Good for my mental well-being, but can be hard on the reader sometimes, but I do tell my friends not to take my words too seriously or too much to heart, they’re just words that escape from the prison in my heart, and overall, these days I’m well helled from ordeals of yesteryears.

        Liked by 1 person

      9. ohh, this sounds to be really a good chohh, this sounds to be really a good choice…I´m trying to do so with my pictures,…”escape from the prison in my heart” and “ordeals of yesteryears”..is wonderful, you are really very talented!…but I´ll stop now commenting…have to search for a rasp , for my own prison…..: )oice…I´m trying to do so with my pictures,…”escape from the prison in my heart” and “ordeals of yesteryears”..is wonderful, you are really very talented!…but I´ll stop now commenting…have to search for a rasp for my own escape…: )

        Liked by 1 person

    1. I started writing this one, over 4 years ago, I was a very confused man at that stage of my life, so the poem remained a jumbled mess, until recently, a still struggled to finish the words, but its the best I could do at such “short notice”

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    2. yes, this line is lovely! The last four lines in fact are very nice. Although, you never should feel like a rejected emblem, ivor. You should know, that everybody here loves you and admires your wisdom, sensibility, and ability!

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  11. Four years in the making? It was worth it. You really do have the soul of a poet. I don’t think I could write something like this. Maybe, my life has been too easy. It could be that a tough life, with many struggles, brings something forth from inside yourself. Whatever you have – keep doing it.

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    1. Thanks Patrick, four years off and on, in and out, up and down, lots of little rewrites, and then shoved away. It was from a difficult time for me, hard to explain, but Carole had been gone just 9 months, and here I was falling in love again, I can’t tell you what sort of jumbled thoughts I was wondering about, but anyhow I managed not to implode, and just ended up like well done scrambled eggs. !!

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    1. Thankyou for reading my poems, and lovely of you to follow my blog/website, muchly appreciated, hope you enjoy my humble writings, and I’m from Geelong, Australia, Cheers, Ivor Steven.

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      2. Where my mind was at then, so hard to explain, but I’ll try. … My had been dead only 10 months, and I’d fallen into a loving relationship, but I started suffering terrible guilt complexs, and my I became awfully confused, and my poem grew out that battle between my new desires and my broken soul…

        Liked by 3 people

      3. Life takes you by surprise sometimes and it brings in new joy when you don’t feel ready to experience them. Did you manage to live that new love in the end? Did it abort because of the guilt you felt? As far as the poem is concerned, your tale fits my vision of a bitter-sweet folk song. So in my book, you did it. You created the mood that you were aiming at.

        Liked by 1 person

      5. Maybe she did not appreciate you enough. Her loss. Heartful souls like yours are rare. The fault is not on you. When a relationship fails it’s usually because of a all set of factors or little pebbles of miscommunication.

        Liked by 1 person

  17. That’s a beautiful poem, Ivor, full of startling imagery. Thank you so much for the explanations in the comments because now it makes much more sense to me. There are three characters, aren’t there? You, the woman you’re starting to love, and your wife whom you loved with passion and self-sacrifice for so many years. So, for example, the rain from a cloudless sky describes your tentative feelings for your new love, while the floods are the love you felt for your wife during her life. And that last line, wow, what a killer finish, had me in tears! “Like a snakes dead skin, her rejected emblem.” One of the half-articulated emotions that an earlier commenter referred to.
    You know, if you worked on that poem with a good editor I reckon it would grace any contemporary anthology.

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    1. Thank you Penny, and your summation is so very correct, and you may understand my difficulty in trying to explain in words, my complex and torn emotions. I am a member of the Geelong Writers Association, and your generous encouragement may well see me enter the poem in our next anthology.

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      1. Yes, I understand the difficulty. You had to scale the foothills of grief before you could even begin to climb the mountain of creating a beautiful poem. You succeeded wonderfully well.

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    1. Thank you for the information Penny, I shall seek his book out. I’ve had a poem published in a book, a collection of poems. Refer to my poem “This Lost Shadow”, on my blog site, June 7th 2017,

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