Ever Where

[Torkelburger]

Everything leads to 
something else
here in Nowheresville
except the river
that steals through it
sleek as a secret reptile
that finds itself in a temporary cage.

Elsewhere brings us
a step closer to the invisible,
the steep bank 
where grasses console the mud,
an abandoned bicycle
resting in the roots of a cypress.

One stream feeds another
until the river goes south into wilderness,
freed from the anthropoid 
into its divine plan of rock and tree 
past the plains of fire
into the Gulf of pure existence.

We feed ourselves
on its disappearance
praying to the breeze across our faces.

I always enjoy your poems very much, this included.  I like what appears to be a good amount of symbolic imagery.


If I was to offer anything, it would be work with the enjambment either to make it more consistent (apparently, I’m OCD), or to reinforce the meaning/text.

I like the very first line ending with “to” as it reinforces the meaning of the text.  This kind of anticipation and/or hesitation in the writing I think could have been carried throughout the poem.  Like maybe L2 of S2, doing the same by ending the line after “closer to”.  Maybe some other places as well.  On that same note, it might be effective to keep with that feel by reducing the end stops/pauses at the end of lines and increasing the caesuras.  Maybe set up the tension by putting the caesura with “the invisible, the steep bank” as one line and then resolving the tension as you have it.  You could do the same with the next stanza with “into wilderness, freed from” and then resolve that tension with what you have.