Slice of Life/SmallPoems Day 16 (today/tomorrow)

(I am participating in the March Slice of Life challenge via the Two Writing Teachers site.  Slice of Life is the idea of noticing the small moments. I have been a participant for many years and each year, I wonder if I will have the energy to write every day. This year, I am going to try to coincide it with my daily poetry writing, and intend to compose small poems on small moments. We’ll see how it goes …)

Day Sixteen

I sense the gap:
more today
than yesterday;
tomorrow, even
more than today

Reaching for
invisible strands
resting in the silence
of this nothing

Where were you
heading when I saw
you last, before
the day came to
such a quiet close?

We wandered
away, not aware
even then that
this time between
would fall into
strange disquiet

more today
than yesterday;
tomorrow, even
more than today

Peace (and healing),
Kevin

11 Comments
  1. I feel like your poem captures quiet and and loneliness. It feels like something a lot of us are experiencing as we had so much noise but now extreme quiet and alone and maybe people we know now gone forever. The last time I felt like this was 9/11…

    • Eerie, for sure … it feels close to that time but different, too … maybe because it’s a slow-rolling event, with the sense that we have not yet reached the worst of it … (I hate even writing that and thinking that but it’s prob true)
      Kevin

  2. Really enjoying these poems you’ve composed across this challenge, Kevin! I’m literally in awe of your ability to compose such beautiful verse daily. This one captures, as Amy said, quiet and loneliness, but also a sense of uncertainty, which we’re all feeling right now. I’d love to feature you in an upcoming call for slices, if that is okay with you?

  3. It’s extraordinary how you capture this moment with such few words, but such poignant words. I love “Where were you heading when I saw you last, before the day came to such a quiet close?” How long will we be wandering away from each other? How long will this “strange disquiet” linger? Wow, is all I can say. I wish you peace and healing.

  4. Our college boy said that it felt like waking up in a new world every day this past week, because circumstances were changing so rapidly, the effects of the virus closing in on even his daily schedule. Your poem captures this sense of the unknown beautifully.

    • While we want some normalcy, it feels so far away … the poem was about Friday afternoon, watching my students leave and knowing it would be a few weeks until we saw them again ….

  5. Such a beautiful poem…and, yes, disquieting…I loved this phrasing so much:
    “We wandered
    away, not aware
    even then that
    this time between
    would fall into
    strange disquiet”
    It’s extraordinary to me how much things have changed so quickly, with all of us growing more and more removed. Thank you for the poetry!

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