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What the tree doesn't catch,
Floods over the fence,
Cuts through the window dust,
Grates on the lampshade,
Edges past the bookshelf
And sets into my
jelly-eye:
For a minute,
A day-end darkened room
turns gold and glimmering;
a gas-fire
flung through a clear expanse—
behind the sum of every
glare-fanning horizon tip
I've ever sprinted toward—
comes to dance
in the mirrored curves
of my cornea,
down a pupil's hole.
For a moment.
Then our sun turns far
beyond the high-edge I see
of earth, continuing
true and boundless
(cutting blockades
and nightfalls)
as insists
its soul.
*
When our sun dies,
Will other stars
roll in, bright?
No—
so the sun
persists.
And
our day-hours
stay light
(though, to the sun,
always a dim blue
face in an endless black):
Your deeds
and mine
may seem lost
where we launch them off—
but they crawl
warm and
cut
bright
through
every
open
crack.
Nature has always fascinated me since a very young age and after reading this poem, it reminds me of all of my personal interactions with nature’s beauty. The emphasis on light, though, symbolizes a sense of happiness and purpose towards one’s life. I interpret the sun in the poem to represent all of the possibilities for imagination and that when things are constantly changing, light will continue to persist as the most powerful force. By referring to light as something that “floods” “cuts” “grates” and “edges” it is heavily personified which also leads me to the conclusion that the author has a deep connection to light and how light has a strong influence on nature. When I was a little girl, I would beg my parents to go to the beach so I could lay in the sun and think. Now, more than a decade later, I still long to spend my time in the sun because it fuels my imagination and makes me feel fully satisfied with my life. I find the collage to be very interesting. The large spark of light illuminates its darker surroundings which to me, represents the intense impact that light has on nature and even on people. Also, the circle of light is not a sun, something that confuses me as the location on where the light is is in the same place where a sun would be. The shape of the poem is very irregular. I can connect this to the irregularity of nature and how things are always fluctuating.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite things to do is watch the sunset on the cliffs in Palos Verdes. So when I saw the collage for “The Next Star,” it immediately caught my eye and reminded me of the spectacular and hopeful feeling I get when watching the sun go down. Though it marks the end of a day, it will also be the start of a new one soon. This poem gave me the same hopeful and relieving feeling. I could see the imagery of the sun edging past the tree, fence, window, bookshelf, etc. just enough to reach the speaker’s eye in a room of darkness. I like how the speaker used “our sun” too, it included me in this shared experience and it gave me peace knowing “its soul” always persists.
ReplyDeleteUltimately, the final stanzas of this poem made me want to comment on it. I loved the connection of the sun’s light and the actions of humans. It made me grateful for the people in my life whose light always shines when I am in a state of darkness. It also made me conscious of my light and my actions. Sometimes I am tutoring, or supporting a friend, or just saying good morning to someone on the street and I don’t see a response, change, or sign they have seen my light, so it is nice to read this poem and think that sometimes they do reach through the cracks and touch the darkness.
In the last stanza, I noticed how the everyday deeds/light beams “crawl warm” and the “cut bright” which reminded me that there are good deeds that shine warm and bright but also bad deeds that crawl and cut, just as the sun can warm you or burn you. This poem gave me comfort and good reminder that my deeds do have an impact even if it isn’t explicit. I enjoyed how the poem sort of fizzled out in the first half resembling a sunset, and how the last stanza had cracks between the words in which light could shine through.
I'm glad it landed on you :) I'm not usually one to pitch my own product ~ but if you like this one, check out "Sun-Chaser" as well: it's got a similar sentiment AND the bonus of being a song, with a link and everything... so you can listen if your eyes are occupied, by something like a sunset :)
DeleteFor most, the world is first processed through the eyes. Vision is imperative to grasping our place and our time, and this poem begins by whisking us through various perspectives to ponder how light and sight can be explored. First, we see from the viewpoint of light itself as it travels through a world filled with obstacles and boundaries; it deflects off some, permeates through others, and even is absorbed by a “jelly-eye.” I imagine myself living in some state between particle and wave (aided by the visual effects of the poem’s organization), hurtling at a speed where thought is nonexistent, and my path is only defined by the slow-moving matter of the universe. Then, we explore the eyeball’s experience as it seeks to take in its entire surroundings and focus the past and the present into one point. I feel the rush of overwhelming amounts of information flowing through me and of trying to compress the endless worlds of tints, shadows, and colors into a single image. Finally, we look through human eyes on Earth toward the journeys of the Sun as we revolve around it. Although I am looking away from the planet, I feel seen by the universe as it includes me in its cycles. This last sentiment is expanded in the next section of the poem, as we realize the Sun’s individuality among stars, the Earth’s special place in space, and the importance of our own small actions, despite the diminutive portion of the universe that we occupy. We may be tiny, but, much like how the last words of the poem climb back toward the center of the page, we begin to relinquish our fears of the universe and conquer intimidation by embracing our own abilities to produce light from within. It is inspiring to think of the breadth of our world not as a reason to be intimidated into nonexistence but as an opportunity for us to thrive and flourish uniquely.
ReplyDeleteThe description and power of light is fascinating to me in this poem, because light in my mind always reflects positivity and brightness. I aim to be a light and I want to radiate joy in times of darkness because that was what I was taught from those around me. Light is something interesting to explore because it is increasingly hard to block and slides past a majority of the obstacles in its path. Light can easily change shape and mold to its surroundings, but its persistence is notable. Something that caught my attention in this poem is that other stars cannot compare to the sun’s light, and I find meaning in this because I often find myself comparing my actions to others, when my own identity is so different from them. The faith that is embedded in the sun, that it will continue to glow, should be emulated in my life as confidence. Persistence may be one of the most important qualities and light can always and should always shine from me. I appreciate that he ends the poem by saying that all of our deeds are recognized, because in the vastness of the universe and the billions of people that live on this planet, I sometimes feel insignificant and unsure. Yet, he makes the specific point, to end with an uplifting message, that our actions, like light, can glimmer through any shade of darkness. This poem makes me think of the phrase “one candle can light up the darkness” and I think this idea is extremely powerful considering the obstacles that we all face on a daily basis. The collage in this poem stood out to me because of how the light was constructed, rather than the typical circle the sun looks like, it is a swirl with space in between the rings of light. The collage shows the fluidity of light and its ability to infiltrate almost anything.
ReplyDeleteI cannot stress enough how vividly the imagery in this poem is. The warm, infernal glow of the sun, the milky depths of the eye, and the sharp lines of the objects gives the work such a perfect feel. I feel like I can reach out and touch each stanza, feel the freedom and grace of the sunlights rays. The poem to me emphasizes the importance of the very attribute in the title, persistence. The sun is such an eternal presence, so utterly grand to a scale I can’t even begin to comprehend. I find many things in the world to be this way, to just be so unfathomably there, so cosmically present, that it's pretty easy to feel small. I mean does what I do really matter? All my small actions, all my tiny thoughts, my fleeting contributions to a universe I can’t possibly hope to understand. But then I reconsider. I try to think about the fact that yes I’m small, probably inconsequential, but I’m here. I’m made from the same atoms, the same space dust that fuels the roaring star. All I can do is have faith that what I do will change something, affect someone. That's what this poem meant to me, even the smallest ray of sun will dodge and weave, zig and zag, eventually finding its way to someone. Through it all the ray makes it to someone's eye, awakening them from a dark room they otherwise may have never left.
ReplyDeleteThe sun could ask the same question: " I mean does what I do really matter?" It's only a mid-sized dwarf, after all, in a universe with countless bigger suns.
DeleteAnd if you can imagine the chorus of little voices just on earth, answering back...something like that reply goes for all of us :)