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Rivers Converge at the Sea
Published: 2002-07-26 03:46:24 +0000 UTC; Views: 2544; Favourites: 30; Downloads: 247
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Rivers Converge at the Seaby jsenn
I read that
all rivers
flow into
the sea and
it occurs
to me that
this water
is the same
water that
swells then
ebbs in
moon driven
tides to
lap at the
shorelines
of Sweden
and Alaska
Australia,
and Japan;
flows
in rivers,
lakes and
ponds; forms
of melted
winter snows,
still lakes
reflecting
sky like
mirrors on
great
mountaintops;
drips from
limestone
cathedral
ceilings
to form
pools within
underground
caves;
filters
through the
earth's
crust, boils,
then spews
upward in
great
fountains
through
fissures at
Yellowstone.
It's the same water.
I dipped my hand into it and wondered if a molecule of this water might have stood still at Moses' command when the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, or been in one drop he drank after striking the rock.
I marveled that it might have bathed Cleopatra or been the first gulp a baby brontosaurus drank from a still pond.
Was a drop of it in the water that baptized my first son or in the first bath I gave the last of my four children?
Might it have watered the desert in Israel or flowed in darkness across the floor fathoms below the surface of the sea?
Could it have been under the foam tip of a giant wave which rolled across Galveston Island in the Hurricane of 1900, or frozen upon the beard of a survivor from the Titanic?
Did it run down the back of a Native American, stalking game in the rain, sink into the earth and rise, two hundred years later, to be tasted by myself from a paper cup in Hotsprings, Arkansas?
Solomon said,
"there is
nothing new
under the sun."
I have
learned
that all
things,
impossible,
improbable
or
unbelievable
have all,
happened
before.
The water
dripping
slowly
from my
fingertips
confirms
that
proclamation
for within
them I am
witness to
creation,
to history
and
tomorrow
morning,
high tide
will occur
at 5:38 A.M.
Joy Senn
7/24/2002
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Comments: 72
Wow....That really makes you think. This is defently a favorite. Thankyou or making such a great poem
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Wow! Wow! and Wow! This is just fantastic! Beautiful! !
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wow.... congrats on the DP , a very well deserved poem
ur beautiful imagery stuns me all the time!
keep em comming
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This poem got me to thinking... how we take something as magnificent as water for granted. How the water we rink now might have been the same water that came into contact with many of histtory's greatest figures. How even this very water we use will one day be used by our ancestors...
Water is nature's records keeper, it is timeless, and plentiful.
This is an amazing piece I also just came to notice after reading spunj13's comment on how the poem does flow like water... quickly at first as if going through a river, and then it slows down as it reaches a pond, and then once more it begins to quickly flow until it reaches its end...
I really liked this, and I'm adding it to my favs! ^_^ Great job!
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Anyother favs, i dont know what more i can say bar that. This just puts so many of my own beliefs into words and upon the page, indeed better than i ever could.
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.
i remember my chemisty teacher years ago told me that with every draw of my breath, i breath a molecule from the last breath of Ceasar as he uttered, "et tu brute, mi fili?"
the oceans have never left us joy. fins / flukes: heart valves guide the tide of salinity through our bodies / minds.
as truly it must.
.
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the things you miss when gone for three weeks...
think i missed this one did you? haha of course not. people should tell me these things.
excellent joy. truly wonderful, not only the writing but the concept behind it. your description, your examples, your beggining, your ending and especially everything in between, you defy adequate description.
your
words
they
trickle
at first
then flow
out and run into the oceans
waves, crashing and playing
along with the fishes and whales
spraying in with the tide onto pebbles
washing the sand and feet of children running along these shores
to drip
.d
..r
..o
.p
and complete the cycle
a.b.s.o.r.b.e.d
into the cup
next to the monitor
as i drink in your thoughts
why read into the poem too much and lose yourself in frivolous things, when you can drink in the inner beauty and realize that sometimes when you write immediately what springs forth from the breast it does lead to the meaningless complexity of life. one insignificant drop of water, witness to all of creation and everything since. amazing.
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whoa.....
just
whoa...
hmm.... it reads very quickly (due to the flow)... and then all of a sudden...well...it's like hitting a pond in the middle... still water... and then it flows on again
//spunj13
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Its that same idea of the air we breathe or the energy we use - yet, its almost mixed with an idea of 'where do we come from', that immortal existance question.
You tied it all in to one big wholehearty enjoyable piece. Much praise.
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this is so beautiful, Joy. very beautiful. the race of words in the beginning and the end, the lengthy description of events that you hold close in your heart. they allow me to breathe. the image of you holding your first child for baptism, and giving your last child a bath, that's what struck me most. it's very loving and beautiful and very touching.
this is precious, Joy.
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*sigh*
I have not the words.
For a few moments I was in a different world, and it was a world of beauty.
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Oh
My
Gosh...
This is your best work yet Joy, totally amazing!! I absolutely love it! I havent written much lately, but this is very inspiring....simply breathtaking...
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the number of comments defintely confirm the fact that this does deserve to be a DD. I wish I could properlly leave behind a comment where I dissect your words and create something equally as beautiful... alas, I lack the talent/intelligence
I enjoyed this on a merit that it was so honest and sincere it something I sadly no longer see in the people I meet today. Behind each smile is a lie only masked by a person's true intentions. Yes this poem flowed... it questioned what we believed to be true, it thought, it conquered, it was spiritual, it was beautiful, it was perhaps even inspirational for others. But with that I found you grew wings and flew on pure truth and exposure of what you believe. Hence, I enjoyed it.
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damn, thats something that makes u think, and very true, very worthy of the dp
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wow, this is great
very well written
+fav and watch
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my first comment might have been a bit too harsh.. I just had to post something opposing the crowd's view hence allowing deviants to post their _actual_ thoughts about the piece rather than a bunch of lofty waffle without logical foundation.
now, simply as a clarification, I felt another comment was needed. first off, I second n03113. secondly, the idea I guess I tried to convey in my prior post was that since it's about water, rivers converging et cetera, a meter enforcing the idea by supplying motion would aid the piece greatly. in other words, the poem could actually be longer if the words hence theme was reinforced by the rhythm of the water itself. as it is now, however, I fear it's present to such a low degree it doesn't justify the poem's lengthy format, thus the read gets, as said, boring. realise that I'm making a distinction between the read and the theme here. sure, although the theme might be recycled, it's still thought provoking to a certain degree. but does that make the read a pleasant one? the answer is, clearly, no. the two are utterly seperate, one gives birth to the other and the strength of the theme and impact of the same is dependent on the construction of the read, which in this case, isn't satisfying enough. sure the theme could be extracted regardless. what I'm saying is that the reader shouldn't have to drag it out of the lump of text, since that, and nothing but that, is the sole purpose of the words in the first place. to do "it's duty/and reach out and grab [the reader] by the throat".
now if it takes days or minutes to produce a poem is actually quite irrelevant. poetry doesn't have to come from the heart but should ultimately end up there. please take this constructively. as proposed before, try writing it again. either in prose form or another poem. if you go for another poem, try to feel the flow of the water itself more, by, perhaps, turning on something like smetana's moldau in the background?
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A water catagory? That is hardly a catagory for poetry, dr-bbg....
"I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is prose - words in thier best order; poetry - the best words in thier best order." -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
I found this quote and I think it perfectly expounds upon what I was trying to get at in my comment said earlier... That sums up why I don't feel this piece as a poem. And As I see, others feel the same way. Maybe you should try to re-write it as a prose? Play with it, and if you do.. let me know, cause I'd like to read it
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yea, i find myself thinking this a lot, however im too lazy to write it all down.
Also i noticed that most of my poems have some sort of water element in them. I think im addicted to water.
Maybe someone needs to make a water category in the poems section
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and if i am a seeker
than shade me not with sharks of prey
all if i am devoid
hath we not wiggled our toes in mud?
yet if i didnt cry
a course would have laid in limbo
at if a garage, is in if (in)kept could not out creep a ballad of bloody bites?
If question question If?
find found pray mound loud nothings nearly placed there in the front where reach would have been.
if not for a course that wasn't round a pound would never come to town. And for that we may trade to traded new.
it's a beautiful thing, life. (and having said that!)
crooked we must slurp these words.
500 radio pigs with tents and pitchforks aren't interested in these rent-a-car blues.
but i'll hold on line for true
through this magnifying glass
my fish guts my last
lion. tamed I fold.
and If I were in a state of grace
I'd wear a red bowtie.
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A poem inspired by the great and studied vision of Joy, a true piece of truth of our existence.
I hope you like it....I wrote it before I read rivers converge at the sea and I did not appreciate what I was trying to say in it until I read this piece of yours, so....I like it now, here goes.
time...
feelings crash
stapled so high
to the mailbox of heaven
inches past underground green mountains
with all forms of life
swimming in the streams
melting their markers
walled outside the laws
these dollars with no sense
making out the forth coming
brightness
lucid leaps
this ballerina of unknown decree
insipintly serving up hotcakes on plates
and maple
syrup rivers spilling their cedar beginings
high above the spell checks seeking rest
on your fingertips.
the music of our unity knowing only
bent pages of dissolate restituion
and
long pauses of purpose
inherent individuality
closepins peaking but normalcy
residing on flux of the meter
which sways my mind
afar out to sea where
the bay breeze is made up
and the free flow is too bright
where the picture
of tons soon swooned not topped dropped
on hulls of sedated gulls.
and pricks of mices
pieced with prisms missing
gone to the supermarket sorry
shops all closed for
waffles
supplying
the revolution with yiteralll references.
so keen
in apparatus
of grand nuance
deem no breast
in full blazing sight beauty rests
on the lull of your lap against my side
my sight of you is the gift of your thought to me
infringently stretched out like shaved porquipines
i'll run on these hill tops
and mark my dips with valley quips and chisel
at this off bent paragram kneeling before your eyebrow
with a magic kind of level
and dreaming of bubbles in the pool
feelings crash and flux my metere
unity flows in dark message halls
closest marks keen super carts
broken wheels but three on Y feel the
carniverous unescapable dragon of the listening stone
that thoughts overtly enbacks palm-o-live of quests in scarce
knocks on ye reddish bluff
opened embrace your idea enTrusted
halt proceed
redesign this house of
in the low low tide that brings you to mosey
my fields of our chastity
can we explore
i'm advised of lessons in this stone skippers paradise
abstructing the pennies and pleating the nickels.
to observe our are you or hour me hi
and suddenly we're pink in the palace of unknown decree
well what can we do for our temptress awaits us
our kites lay flat for you
and the grass do break through and your eyebrow
nourishment superimposes my mind and your fate and our
hearts become one
and i so am.
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Thank you Deej, for your words, I appreciate them and the fact that you chose this poem as DD, very much. I especially thank all of you who took time to comment.
I wish I could tell you this poem was some great and studied piece, that I just happened upon some truth of our existence, but I don't write like that, it is a poem, simply, which grew and was penned from my heart, for me there is no other way to write.
It's okay not to like a poem. Although I usually keep that information to myself about yours, I understand the statement with clarity, and it's okay to say I wish you'd done this a little differently, because truly, I do learn from that.
You who think the poem would read "better," in a different form, may be right. To me, form, is an extension of the words I write, I have to trust my intuition, because what I know about form I've learned by watching you and from reading poetry. I wrote this poem in rhyming stanzas, the center in paragraphs. Some life-side issues made it hard to write in detail, and for some reason it lined up, wanted to read fast, wanted to spread out in personal thought, then line up again.
I see the river and ocean aspect of the form now, I didn't see it when I did it, but I never regret the form a poem takes. More often than not I am intrigued by the way the words lie on the screen and I love the surprise they often give me and the reader. (see "lostatseainapeagreenboat" )
The only thing I would change about this poem is the last stanza. I would leave out, "morning," I think it would read sweeter if I'd written:
and
tomorrow
high tide
will occur
at 5:38 A.M.
thank you and love to you all
Joy
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Joy, this poem makes me thirsty.. for water and for more. How slickly done.. I love this. Amazing thoughts.
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i really like the concept - well, i even have a little prose that's about the same concept! but i have to agree with n03113, maybe this would work much better as prose.
-hmm- i also thought the poem's a bit lenghty, especially on that part of the bigger verses... i don't think it would be necessary to go into such great detail. the poem would probably be much better if it was shorter and simpler - thus more effective!
don't take me wrong, i liked your poem and i see that you write very well, i'm just giving you suggestions so that if you ever want to rewrite this poem you can improve it!
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I might be shot for this.. but I dunno.. it doesn't hit me.. I don't like it really. it does have thoughts provoking.. But I just don't feel the poeticness of it.. maybe it's just me. I think it would have been very effective in a prose form.. I like the concept but the way it's written I think doesn't give it justice. And I don't think I'm getting the rythm. And... was the big chunk in the middle supposed to be like a river flowing into an ocean? and then returning to a river? Cause if it did, it's a good representation, but to me it's not distinct enough if I have to question it.. Don't hurt me! But, congrats on the DD!
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I don't feel like creating more literature for this...
Pretty nice p.
Congrats on dd.
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wow..justb. your comment spills so much insight into this forum, were it to evaporate it could create planetary elucidation on the soul of poetic license.
american/martian/hasbeen.. whatever. this poem has drawn my conciousness to a pool of commonality, the splendorous wonder of one minutae of what we take so often for granted. Trite is a product of conditioning, unstructured and fluid, this poem calls out over centuries, a vision of life beyond the words, beyond the languages, beyond boundary of real estate, and culture. Piercing a notion, with prose, perception has tasted water with renewed appreciation. It seems the composition rests inside the heart, unsullied by the tantrum, egos parade of concepts often limits evolution. Rigidity is a sign of death. The lesson, should any have noted is to observe waters finer attributes, you may last longer and enjoy many more experinces as a result. Joy, this poem has quenched my thirst with a ponderous amount of vision. I thank you!
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T-...
Wow...
Yeah...
Amazing. I like the whole idea of it, it's very original. Well written too.
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I happen to love the poems form, often one's notion of infinity is expressed as archaic and of un fathomable length.
One particular mathematical notion of infinity that comes to my mind is tangent.
What is tangible?
such concepts, as tangent, in which infinite lines approach but never meet, still hold a shape to them in a way.
What strikes me about this poem is the way Joy begins the poem and ends the poem, in LONG vertically stringent skinny quips at her point. Then something magical happens in the middle, the "get so close but never touch" idea is enveloped in long horizontal fashion, and the reader elopes with her into her cyclical haven, no matter how true to infinite one attempts to approach infinity, there still must be a structure applied, which goes against its own support of formlessness in a way.
A gift Joy has is the ability to slow the process of her thinking almost to a halt, such that you may be enveloped in the magical and yes mysterious way that we switch from thought to thought, from form to form, we do it everyday we slip from feeling to feeling belief to belief and even into metaphysical "dream" worlds. Almost in the way that at any point an atom can not be pinpointed to it's exact proximity to the nucleus of its atom, there is always a natural force governing ready to propel us around the next great bend in our life. In Joy's tackeling of this wonderous look at the cycle of nature, through the eyes of a drop of water, we are exposed to Joy in her most full bloom, As she is the queen, I believe what she is saying here is even the littlest part of a cycle is as grand as the greatest river, and supported as it were the strongest arch. For it is all a part of what is, and being a part of what is, this drop of water that has dropped from Joy herself, is prone to the laws of what is what can be and what can never be, but I for one, look through the mist, and low and behold a drop of water did fall from my computer screen, and it did not heed the law of gravity and it landed on my mind.
Joy, Thanks for being you.
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I agree with oq. The idea behind the poem is trite, and what you may think is an 'alternative' form in poetry will not redeem the poem much. Here, the fragmentation seems gratuitous (or the purpose does not seem obvious anyway) and actually takes away from the experience, for me
I doubt this little bit of criticism will affect you much, since many people here seem to love you. But if you're happy catering to the popular taste and not those of people like me, blah. I can see why the majority likes it.
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Sorry...don't really care for it. In poetry, I like words to entertain me, not ideas...I think it's better to have someone lose themselves in what you're saying rather than the point you're getting across. Too much prose, not enough poetry. Just my opinion though Everyone else seems to like it.
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i dont think theres much to be said that hasnt already been mentioned.. i completely agree w utro on this one and i just love the way the words flow back and forth as the waves do. This is why i also think that they shud definitely add the "Loves Deviation" option!
Melody
PS: im in awe
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the same sigh expressed
once graced
the wings of things
now carved into stone,
that stone,
once sand
carried by my sigh
today yesterday
away.
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"Adam is the only one who, having said something, knows he was the first to say it" -- Mark Twain (I think)
That's what comes to mind, anyway.
As this poem alludes to, everything in this world is recycled on some level, be it natural resources, or ideas. I think this idea has been around the block a time or two, but you've done a pretty nice job breathing life back into it.
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It never ceases to amaze me the way some people can flat-out contradict themselves. lumiere said: "the concept is too much holding on to reality. It's not very philosophical at all."
Philosophy: Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods.
Anyways, on to the poem. I love the idea behind this. Ponderings on the recycling of that which is life, water, throughout the ages, something that at one time brought on destruction, now brings on a cleanising; what one time carved the grand canyon now soothes the cracks in your hand; and what at one time touched your newborn's skin for the first time, now brings you memories of that first bath.
The poem is beautiful in both its ponderings and its form. Wonderfully done, as always love.
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I don't like it at all...the concept is too much holding on to reality. you say everything in too many words and it bores me. It's not very philosophical at all. it's just different people's ideas smashed into a poem. one thing I like: there is not rythym. but I still don't like the poem.
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I certainly don't want to ruin Joy's poem by arguing in it...
So i'll just say..
for the DD hun!
I love your work, Joy. Oq has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. I love every work that you come out with and each one makes me think long and hard, and leaves with a feeling of peace and beauty which is so hard for me to find these days.
Opinions are like arse holes: everyone has one, and they all stink. But don't listen to those that aren't capable of seeing beauty in the beautiful.
I my new mommy
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gaaah..gagagaa... AMERICAN. first off, I really hate when people divide poems up into a mass of lines to 'let the reader taste every word' just because the author is incapable of writing something with a somewhat distinct flow.. or perhaps leave the freeverse world altogether and actually compose something with actual RHYTHM. but that's just me, and yes, I know such a fact doesn't belong here. the only thing I actually wanted to say is that the idea is really boring. it's like the overused example of how many words snowpeople who live in snowcountries have for snow, just because it's so god damn much snow around. trite is the word I'm looking for.
sure, the concept of undestructable atoms is poetic and nice.. it's just that it's printed in every middle school chemistry book out there.
as for your allusions, which is btw the only poetic device the entire poem rely on, I guess they're nice. if every reader out there happend to be an american jew, that is.
nice, though it doesn't reach far, if assuming that claiming it reaches anywhere at all is at all feasable. which it propable is. since this is deviantart. and everything is art.
..right?
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How 'bout that...
Do you know that I think this poem has turned me into a poor commenter?
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Thats one damn good poem. Well done. You deserve a
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Oh yes indeed. Highly ponderous, beautifully executed, and thankfully received here. I love this.
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Yay, its about time I find a poem on DA that is actualy good. This one is great for the way it has truth about it. Good stuff.
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Beaitufl portry from a Wounderful Gurl!. what more could you expect..
I love the picture, looks asian kinda style..
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i will always be in awe of your poetry.
i love this poem. you have showed us in a deeper sense that the cycle never really ends.
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i hate the religios stuff, but you sure have smoked your fair share of the green
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