3 WAY MIRROR (Book) - 3/1/2019 3:25:25 PM
Five stars!
Odin Roark, in 3-Way Mirror, has penned a psychological mystery worthy of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest honors. Charles Randall wakes up on the beach, wet, shoeless and bare chested, with no memory of anything... Not even his name. He finds a Harley-Davidson motorcycle with saddlebags filled with cash and directions to a paid up bungalow suite at the Hollywood Hilton. Also a blank diary with the name he assumes as his on the first page. All that money doesn't agree with him and Randall doesn't know how to start or ride the Harley, but he pushes the bike out to the highway and finds a way to the hotel. The cash allows Randall to seek psychiatric help in the form of one of the best psychiatrists in Hollywood, Dr. Carlton Matthews, to help him find out who he is. There are some clues in the bungalow like a driver's license, but nothing more.
Matthews suggests that Randall keep a journal in the form of taping his sessions and thoughts in the hopes of jogging some of those memories that are lost into focus. He uses hypnosis that has the effect of conjuring up strange dream like thoughts but no firm information that Randall can call his. Charles receives a letter from a Laura Sobel suggesting that she needs to meet with him to discuss how they will manage the "rest of his money."
While riding the Harley around the neighborhood, Charles happens upon people who call him "Charlie." Some of them seem to be very familiar with him as Charlie Stevens, deepening Charles's concern about who he really is. Charles sends Dr. Matthews to meet with Sobel, ill-prepared to be able to deal with her from his lack of knowledge about himself. Charles takes a sojourn to Death Valley on the Harley and meets a girl in trouble, Sara Reynolds, and feels obligated to help her in her situation. It seems to be in his nature to help people.
Laura Sobel sends Charles on missions to Las Vegas, New York City, and Hong Kong, to tie up loose ends about the money and, as far as Matthews is concerned, to help him find clues to his identity. In New York City, she reveals her love for him, confusing him even more since he is already committed himself to Sara and something tells him it is wrong. Wanting to tour the city and in need of a tour guide, Charles befriends a boy, Max, and his blind father, Julius. Max has a Ratso Rizzo knowledge of NYC and Julius has a sixth sense that appeals to Charles and helps him with his struggle to find himself.
Along the way after Hong Kong, Dr. Matthews makes a serious mistake of becoming too involved with his patient and Laura Sobel reveals much about what is still in the LA area and why the place that Charles woke up in is so crucial to who he is. The story comes to a head when Laura Sobel dies and both Randall with Matthews are accused of murder. Both are are sent to the state hospital to be evaluated for their sanity as a result. Much of the book dwells on the esteemed panel of psychiatrists reviewing Charles Randall's tapes of his quest. The outcome of their review is not surprising. But the outcome of the book certainly is. Odin Roark has a way of teasing out every thought along the way until all is revealed in the end. Don't stop reading until you get there.
Ronald W. Hull is author of his autobiography, Hanging by a Thread, seven novels and three books of short stories.
ECHOSIS (Book) - 1/22/2019 3:07:16 PM
Echosis is one of those novels that I'll never forget. It is a journey story not simply of individual lives but of the whole human race. Brilliant glimpses into the mind, body, and spirit, leave the reader with a renewed sense of worth and hope. Odin Roark taps into the depths and depravity of people who have lost their humanity and yet also touches upon the mysterious region of the soul that can encounter an "otherness" which aids us in time of great need. This novel fixes on creativity as a cure for our chosen self-destruction. Art as a healer. Though it is a work of fiction, it touches a very real world and offers meaningful solace to the human heart.
3 WAY MIRROR (Book) - 11/24/2018 10:57:23 AM
I am now posting this book's 2nd edition (first edition publisher went out of business). See the new version in "story" section of site.
Enjoy.
Perceptions (Book) - 10/1/2018 2:16:30 PM
I'm thanking you here for your review the other day of my poem "A Dead
Reckoning With Death". I also want to inform you of the publication of my recent novel THE PERFORMANCE. I've been writing for fifty years and if I can point to one work that I'm certain is a rare achievement, this one, available on Amazon, is it. It needs word of mouth. Should you read it, please let me know your impressions.
My best,
BK
3 WAY MIRROR (Book) - 12/14/2013 7:31:04 PM
I will be getting it.
Perceptions (Book) - 12/4/2012 4:10:02 PM
Big Congratulations on this, Odin Roark! ~~ Diana Legun
ECHOSIS (Book) - 12/4/2012 11:51:32 AM
Quite a rant - nice symbolism at the end, wild geese in Spring ... hopeful ...
ECHOSIS (Book) - 12/3/2012 4:03:26 PM
Heavy stuff. It interests me, but its length is a challenge to this engineering reader of short stories. I was already editing the excerpt. May check back later on this creative piece.
Ron
Prosetry at Work (Book) - 6/10/2012 9:04:54 AM
Congrats on your book. I don't have a poetry book and probably won't unless there's some demand, somewhere.
Ron
3 WAY MIRROR (Book) - 4/15/2012 3:17:22 PM
Glad I didn't read your excerpt here before I commented on your "Darkness Three," because some answers are in this excerpt. Now I want to know the whole story. Belonging to AuthorsDen might be a boost for Amazon and the creative someones who tread this website; I may need to boost my employment! ~~ Diana
A Gentle Man (Short Story) - 7/8/2026 2:42:53 PM
Hello,
I just finished reading your story and wanted to reach out. I've read many stories online, but yours had something special about it. The writing felt immersive, cinematic, and incredibly easy to visualize.
As a commissioned comic artist, I work on Webtoons, comics, character illustrations, and cover art. Your story has all the ingredients of a great visual project, and I would love the opportunity to discuss a possible comic adaptation with you.
If you're interested, feel free to contact me on Inst.gram (luna art soul).
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Luna
A Gentle Man (Short Story) - 5/20/2026 4:40:45 PM
This has many beautiful lines - the clean click of a door closing on a windy day - it’s a treasure to have simplicity sometimes.
Patience Waning (Short Story) - 5/3/2026 11:59:32 AM
Your story builds anticipation to a crescendo that mirrors the image created. And then, you leave us to come to our own conclusion what will happen if one of those missiles strikes the street with its message of death and destruction.
Well done. Too many are "looking to the south" these days.
Ron
Ladle Lines (A prosetry memory) (Short Story) - 4/26/2026 11:37:13 AM
You took both Rex and me there. Like how you introduced a loyal dog into your memory. Did you have one in Manhattan?
I believe it was there, in the soup kitchen, that you acquired all your empathy for those less fortunate.
I recall my dollar a day regimen of the Bakery Café in the morning for coffee and sweet rolls. Mid afternoon at the Anchor Café for the hamburger basket. With a dime left over for orange Fanta at the Rendezvous, where others all drank tap beer.
But no experiencing humanity like you did, until my junior year end I had breakfast at Erv's Café, listening to the regulars with their morning chatter.
Ron
A Gentle Man (Short Story) - 4/20/2026 8:16:53 AM
I believe I know that man. And many.
While I possessed that gentle nature you describe so well, I also raged against injustice wherever I saw it practiced with impunity and arrogance. I always sought love, but didn't find it until I quit looking.
It was only when I quit chasing money for other people and found retirement, that I truly felt free.
Ron
A Gentle Man (Short Story) - 4/19/2026 9:41:27 AM
We've all gone through seasons where we were so desperate to be understood, that we forget about being understanding of others. In order to move gracefully into the next season, we have to understand why we felt the way we felt, and why we did what we did, and why we no longer have to feel and act that way. Enjoyed the message in this. Good images. Peace.
Pacing Love's Journey (Short Story) - 4/15/2026 8:30:16 AM
Nicely conceived and deeply felt. Third person works well. The images are unique and colorful. And the content is very personal but still palpable. Enjoyed this insight into your life. Hope you're well. Peace... r
Pacing Love's Journey (Short Story) - 4/13/2026 10:54:09 AM
It is often that you cover a subject through the course of life span. And what subject is more revered and less understood than love.
Rather than a simple, "What's love got to do with it? "You have provided a richness to love that is rare in the simplistic ways that people feel of love these days.
Kudos for your insight.
Ron
Gratitude (Short Story) - 2/7/2026 4:54:24 AM
I love this ; it shows that everything is connected in some way.
We have only to read the patterns to find essence of the journey.
Rx
Gratitude (Short Story) - 2/6/2026 10:13:18 AM
A quiet reminder of how grace hides in the smallest corners of our days. I love how each vignette turns an ordinary frustration into a moment of clarity. You show, without preaching, that gratitude isn’t a grand gesture but a shift of the heart. A beautiful, humane prose meditation.
A Sticky Conversation (Short Story) - 2/3/2026 7:31:20 AM
Really interesting. Can't say 'classic' Odin, because you are such a multi-faceted writer. But I can say it's an exchange that would lend itself easily to film vignette, or even theater, if it was produced properly. There are some images that I find memorable. This one: “My bathroom. I hinged the mirrors around. Reflections of reflections. A hall of mirrors selfie.” could become a piece of art easily. Well done ole friend. Peace.... rlc
A Sticky Conversation (Short Story) - 1/31/2026 1:38:58 PM
The story is all a dream – Cool. Just conversation between a psychiatric patient and his orderly. No drunk driving accident or citation resulted from this story.
The ding strategy was classic. When some yo-yo had parked in the van accessible space, I parked in two spaces so that I could get in and out of my van without having to move it by other people –very dangerous.
I use stickies for something very valuable…but I can't tell you what it is.
Ron
Blazing Now and Then (Short Story) - 10/14/2025 12:20:16 PM
As autocratic nation states carve up their various boundaries in a world full of turmoil, Lines like "autocrats scripting history like malware in the bloodstream of nations." make a lot of sense.
But isn't written history itself, just the story of autocratic, violent conquest from the very beginning writing where only the emperor had all scribes with pens under his/her thumb?
So what's new? We are closer to a kinder, more benign, World Society than we think. It just takes resolve and understanding. Just let the "feed," feed us the truth.
Ron
Vulnerable Captivity (Short Story) - 9/27/2025 11:52:44 AM
I cried for him. Like I always stood up for the one that was being abused in the playground, the classroom or in the theater of life. Beautifully written.
For what good are insults and character assassination except planting seeds of distrust and hopelessness.
Deep down in the minds of those who are now taking up the plentiful arms in their loneliness and taking shots into nowhere. Those who were verbally abused, cast out and unwanted.
Ron
The Kite That Would Not Bow (Short Story) - 9/16/2025 11:45:26 AM
Poignant. You are very good at poignancy. Ironic that the best poetry is often misunderstood by the masses with only third grade reading and understanding ability.
My first thought though was from the title. The Kite Runner was a movie depicting a true (fictional?) story of a boy and his kite in Afghanistan circa 1965. His father was all about westernization and even owned a Mustang convertible. The film sadly recounts what fundamentalist religion has done to the country. Taking it backward into chaos and war. Leaving the country and not being able to take his best friend with him.
Time (Short Story) - 7/31/2025 10:47:43 AM
The story shows the path that many people take. We all wonder how our individual plot will end. Heroic or just a quiet wasting away? Did all our good deeds bring about some good? Did our mistakes ruin as many lives as it sometimes felt? Where's all of this going? We are incapable of knowing.
Time (Short Story) - 7/27/2025 12:35:35 AM
excellent!
Holding My Breath (Short Story) - 6/22/2025 2:57:38 PM
Enjoyed reading. Shows you're alive and thinking about things.
Ron
City POVs (Short Story) - 6/5/2025 1:29:38 PM
A side of Manhattan I didn't see while visiting all the tourist spots one day before Thanksgiving. I did get to see the mix of humanity in the subway, though. With my brother's strong admonition that I should not "stare at anyone."
I'll have to admit that I did sneak a peek or two of what was going on on the other side of the car. But not in a way to provoke anyone to come after me with a knife.
There certainly is a broad range of human experience going on.
Ron
Spirit-Earth's Relief Map (Short Story) - 3/24/2025 1:41:31 PM
A poignant story of how being high in the towers of Manhattan, wheeling and dealing has no sense of compassion when it comes to sacred land. A story that needs to be told, over and over again.
Makes me recall that movie I saw as a child, making a big impression on me. How Green Was My Valley. How the coming of coal mines to the Welsh countryside changed it from a pastoral place and the people into coal miners with black lungs and the danger of mine disasters ever present.
As I noted to John's poem about music, the only time I drove through Monument Valley, a windstorm was whipping up dust that partially covered the base of the monuments. But the haunting Navajo flute music on the radio matched the scene perfectly.
It's hard to think that humans (Indians like to call themselves) have survived in that barren landscape for thousands of years. But young Navajos today, while still living there, must live off of the white man's money rather than that wild and beautiful land. And some with a free college education may be finding themselves in the boardrooms of Manhattan.
Ron
A Story Evolving (Short Story) - 1/25/2025 2:40:00 PM
A great description of the average California dream. Generations stuck in the same place because they know no other any better in spite of all the convenience and inconvenience.
Beautifully written and gave me a bit of reminiscing of relatives who lived there.
And then game the fires…
Ron
A Story Evolving (Short Story) - 1/21/2025 3:49:44 PM
This is an epic roam through the story of the story. It set the tone for your last two lines, Odin. There is a feeling of sponging up the details you provide here, and I feel the hot breath of recognition and sopping sadness from top to bottom of this, adding another name to the red-blooded streets, the many Martin Luther King Boulevards of America. Moment of silent respect where it resides far from the maddening crowd. Keep writing, Odin ~~ djl
Love Knows No Short Cuts (Short Story) - 1/14/2025 4:25:12 PM
Your poem is so wise, Odin, and deep. In the end love is all that really matters. Excellance as always.
Love Knows No Short Cuts (Short Story) - 1/11/2025 1:18:04 PM
As you often do, you begin this story with the stages of life and love and then move into the more subtle loves that we all are heir to.
When we love ourselves we no longer have to worry about whether someone else loves us or not.
I like the way you describe how religious dogma has entered our society, forcing a lovely marriage like one man and one woman Adam and Eve with their absolutely perfect marriage and they're wonderfully behaving sons, Cain and Abel.
My marriage vows lasted only as long as she wished to be with me so I have found love without marriage and what that means in our lockstep society still in the grasp of religion rather than what love really means.
Ron
IT 'Round His Neck (Short Story) - 1/1/2025 10:19:52 AM
Sometimes the truth is so obvious , and you’ll do anything to mold it to what you need at the moment , as if you’re forgiving yourself . You write about growth well, regardless of actual age.
War and Peace (Article) - 12/12/2025 3:46:53 PM
Masterful thoughts made palpable by a mind like no other.
War and Peace (Article) - 10/15/2025 1:15:30 PM
Let's face it, war is brutal, unkind and immoral. Yet it has been glorified down through history by the winners who wrote the history, while the losers just died – whole vibrant communities completely disappeared. Except for occasional archaeological finds, that they existed.
It can be argued that war is necessary to keep the population from growing beyond the Earth's means to sustain it. But modern wars and diseases, do not cut the population like simple desire not to have children. Something that is happening in the cities, but not in the countryside.
Let us hope, like your article suggests, that the struggle between Muslim and Jewish religions will not continue in a secular world of business and trade. And that the world will wake up and punish Russia for attempting to take Ukraine and try to create the Soviet Union again. It serves Russia people nothing to be at war with Ukraine except suffering.
Ron
Mental Hypos (Article) - 12/27/2023 8:55:47 PM
I once purchased a next-day AI stock predictor with
a 70 percent record of directional probability accuracy. It failed three days in a row. My standby AI model that claims to synthesize
4 complex algorithms is rarely inside its error rate. Now I
am winning with my own intuition. I hope to recoup my losses
before I die. At least there is nothing artificial about death.
Desperation Breeds Desperation (Article) - 10/1/2023 12:56:23 AM
What has changed? Virtually nothing. In the midst of luxury, and marvelous inventions, there are still dictator SOBs who live in a world of wealth and comfort who still want to destroy everyone and everything they do not understand or have personal control over. We are one stumble away from a MAD nuclear war that nearly one-half our own Congress is welcoming with empty heads.
Desperation Breeds Desperation (Article) - 9/24/2023 11:53:48 AM
Few Americans today, particularly those in Congress, have any idea what it was or is like for desperate people during much of the 20th century. In 1957, we had a Hungarian girl in our class. No one asked her what kind of horror she went through to get to our country. But she moved before we reached high school.
Those of us born of the "Greatest Generation." were sheltered from desperation except one of our classmates who lost his father in WWII and became a spiritual after struggling to earn money to help his mother denies. Our grandparents, survivors of the Great Depression, knew it and didn't talk about except my grandmother, Hull. She hated war and probably had lost a suitor during WWI to that meat grinder or the Spanish flu.
Your poetic article reminds me of the fictional short story I wrote of a desperate couple in Mumbai.
Ron
Preference Manifest (Article) - 9/16/2023 12:26:39 PM
I agree with most. But there is a certain serendipity involved in every life that steers it one way or another, never to return.
Except that is, for those who never venture 1 mile from the place they were born and following their mother or father's footsteps, creating only offspring as their legacy.
Ron
Innocent Guilt (Article) - 9/2/2023 7:37:27 AM
How guilty are the guilty? And who can truly judge? You touch on profound and painful realities, ever present in our contemporary minds and souls. Vivid word choices make me pause..."life’s cauldron of discontent." Though I, too, have few answers...
Barbed Isolation (Article) - 8/30/2023 11:40:04 AM
Another way of putting it. The more I know, the more I know that I know less. Like your article suggests, there are those of us who tried to break the mold of writing a particular way along a well-traveled genre with restrictions, and then there are those of us who try to break through those restrictions and write on subjects sometimes irreverent, oblique, achingly truthful, or taboo.
I mourn for the authors stuck in a rut and never break free like the faithful loyal who follow the leader regardless of the leader's behavior.
Much food for thought…
Ron
Barbed Isolation (Article) - 8/28/2023 2:48:03 PM
Beautifully expressed, Odin. You remind me of a book I am reading: The Scandal of Holiness—Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints. It's basically what you are saying—that through images/words authentically expressed, we grasp more fully not only the human experience but also the Creator's Image of us...who we are and who we yearn to be "...knowing any answers will beget more questions." We are together in our singular search. A comforting thought.
Blessings.
A Place... (Article) - 8/28/2023 9:53:12 AM
You have captured the creative mind very well in this piece. While the real is carefully guarded and structured, human mind can go far further explaining the human condition.
I guess it's why we write. When I have these dreams… Strange stories that I have to write down, it's far different from the closed gates of my writers' group where they set stringent boundaries on what I write and using English teacher's rule for what is written rather than the way I perceive it to be. I rarely go off into the ethereal because I find it real stories are often stranger than fiction. I was honored when one reader thought that my tales of my life were fiction.
But you went far further with the political aspect of control of writing, the censorship and even book burning of the moral right. Something must be stopped at all cost.
Very penetrating and true…
Ron
A Place... (Article) - 8/26/2023 1:40:12 PM
How refreshing! Your words made me think of a song that was out in the mid sixties, I believe. "Little Houses".......they lyrics tell of how our youth is put "into boxes made of ticky tacky. little boxes. all the same and that they all end up..."all the same". Check it out sometime. Your words made my heart skip a beat....for real!!
Love ya!
Jane
A Place... (Article) - 8/26/2023 8:01:46 AM
Seeking out "inner truth" is a journey that reveals many imperfections. I'm thinking it's better to be hated for what you truly are, than to be loved for what you aren't. As a writer, you always seem to seek out the inner truth that circumvents the symbols and the trends and unties the knot in your brain, which logically connects you then with the part of yourself that allows you to resist the temptation to tell people only what they want to hear. It's one of the things I admire about you. Speak and write with integrity. Say only what you mean. Be precise and accurate. Avoid using your words to speak ill of another, or to demean or gossip about another. Use the power of your words to inform, enlighten, entertain, challenge, and to reveal your personal inner truths. Enjoyed. r
Sanity's Loss (Article) - 8/24/2023 8:52:22 AM
You brought to mind the old movie, How Green Was My Valley. About the horrible conditions in the coal mining regions of southern England during the early part of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. I experienced a bit of that with many childhood diseases in the coal soot dirty industrial town of my elementary years.
But we are in the 21st century and the very thing that cleaned up the sooty coal landscape of the 20th century, crude oil and natural gas, has launched a new scorge that you have so elegantly displayed for us to try to stomach.
Most people are aware of the danger coming, but continue with their own consumer driven lifestyles as though they will get theirs before everything falls apart instead of drastically changing their footprint on the earth. Instead, leaving their legacy to future generations who will have to clean up the mess we are creating every day in every way.
I, too, am guilty. Locked in a lifestyle I acquired when I married and came to Houston. A city booming from the oil, gas and chemical facilities that ring the eastern half of the city and bring great wealth and destruction to the environment at the same time… I could count the ways but you have more dramatically show the results. Wistfully, I wish I had remained where I was before with a much smaller footprint seen from space.
Keep writing on this subject and so will I. Hopefully we will all come to our senses before reaching a tipping point of no return comes.
Ron
Organs Anonymous (Article) - 8/3/2023 11:31:52 AM
Very well done. Covered every aspect of the search for immortality.
Bodybuilding at its finest. But with drugs and enhancements, will the brain keep up? I applaud your efforts to make those of us with disabilities more able, but I find the human body a perfect place that should be preserved like evolution has created, rather than modified to meet the needs of the mirror and prolong the life of the wealthy who, in their youth did not take care of their bodies.
These new hearing aids are a blessing and a curse. They need to be a lot better before I would have them implanted permanently. Stem cells for reversing spinal cord injury, like Christopher Reeve advocated for, so far has not come to pass, but it may in the future, after both he and I are dead.
Ron
Organs Anonymous (Article) - 7/30/2023 8:59:02 AM
Creepy stuff, Odin. What in the world did you read or watch that brought these kinds of thoughts? Whether or not this will develop to the next level is yet to be seen. You seem convinced(?) I surely hope I'm not here if the reciprocity of AI, 3-D printing, and human beings becomes a reality. Thanx 4 sharing. r
Fatuous Beyond Absurdity (Article) - 7/26/2023 11:05:40 AM
Love the folksy language, but I doubt any kind of wind will pluck a chicken. The 1930s dust bowl may come again when the Midwestern aquifer is entirely dry. Same thing in California. More likely everything just drying up from lack of water for irrigation. And freezes that will come down every year into Mexico and kill all the monarchs wintering there along with lots of tropical crops we depend upon, some grown in the US but in peril now. Along with countless insects, birds and animals, fish in the sea. Our food in the future may be just manufactured, because there is no way of providing it any other way.
As long as the Middle East has a grip on fossil fuel production pricing, the idiots will prevail until it's too late. They already live in a desert, have ample wind and solar power, as well as desalianation plants available for their water. Many will buy whatever they need to survive their high lifestyles. While billionaires elsewhere may find it very hard, even with money, to survive very long after all of the simple people on the land are gone.
Too much rhetoric into little action too long.
Ron
Truth is One (Article) - 7/23/2023 11:01:28 AM
If you are equating truth (in this instance) with honesty, then yes...
Given the philosophical drift here, exclusive becomes the antonym of inclusive. As adjectives the difference between inclusive and exclusive is that inclusive includes almost everything within its scope, while exclusive excludes those things that do not meet certain criteria. So.... is your use of the word "between" inclusive or exclusive? Thanks for sharing. r
Truth is One (Article) - 7/23/2023 10:49:25 AM
"Different strokes for different folks," comes to mind. Making the truth what we make of it. But I think the inquisitive mind of us is always seeking to improve what we think is true. The courage is, to let go of some that has become drastically wrong and no longer truth most of us.
Once in a while I burst out singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic. To think that our Civil War soldiers went to war singing, "The truth goes marching on." A clear reference to why they were fighting southern Americans… The false truth that slavery was good for the country.
Ron
Truth is One (Article) - 7/23/2023 8:51:27 AM
Love this piece and Love Tagore, the brilliant poet who won the Nobel Prize. The title of one of my books, Feathers in the Dust, was taken from a verse from one of his poems.
Mental Hypos (Article) - 2/13/2023 12:48:37 PM
I hope you're right. I'm not ready for a brain transplant anytime soon. And I'm not sure if I had any more years to live that I would be happier and writing more stuff that nobody reads. at least while I still have most of my teeth
Ron
Hiding in Shadows (Article) - 10/22/2022 6:21:50 AM
Sometimes we are only one thought away from peace and joy. A thoughtful article. I've heard it said that suffering is the result of not having what we think we should have. Always enjoy your work, Odin.
Hiding in Shadows (Article) - 10/4/2022 12:58:20 AM
Socrates was a gift to the world of enlightenment. He questioned virtually every act, rule, and law that did not pass the elements of reason. The entire foundation of science today is built upon the Socratic Method of inquiry. You have captured the essence of his brilliant mind succinctly and eloquently. Fear is the tool of little minds that cannot handle its antithesis: enlightenment. So well written!
Hiding in Shadows (Article) - 9/25/2022 9:11:16 AM
In a short article, you have encapsulated the darkness that so many feel when they hear instant news about what's happening both in their neighborhood and across the globe. Countless tragedies, diseases and disasters.
While some wish to remain in the darkness behind closed doors and shuttered windows from all of the felons and sex offenders in their neighborhoods, buying up guns, supporting larger police forces and military SWAT teams while they helicopter manage their children either by homeschooling or in private enclaves of "our kind." Removing from mind and sight all the unsightlies and becoming rather rigid and controlling about everything.
There are those in the light that see a whole new world opening where information enables them to travel widely, meet other people in the sunshine and realize that their neighbors are their friends when any disaster comes. Everyone pitching in and lending a helping hand until everything is back to normal again. Normal is not too hard to reach if everyone wishes it. But if you are one of those in the darkness of your poem, you are contributing to the problem our world is facing.
Ron
Hiding in Shadows (Article) - 9/25/2022 8:22:51 AM
Most people do live in shadows. The writer, however, puts his shadows out into the light for all to see. Brave advice to be noted here.
Not Again! (Article) - 6/16/2021 9:58:12 AM
I read that the boondoggle pulled off by fearful Republicans rallying around a big risk blowhard semi-celebrity as their savior would result in a backlash that would last at least 40 years. Long enough to remove the ultraconservative and backward nature of the Supreme Court. Fortunately, the Court has, in recent decisions, ruled, for the most part, reasonably.
However, the minority Republicans are grasping at straws, chasing conspiracies and backward ideas based on the Bible and other easily disproven ideological premises, will change things. That somehow demonizing Democrats will persuade independent thinkers to vote for their outdated and obscene candidates and laws.
The Republicans have walled themselves off from the American dream. They know it, and a few have started to defect from this radical, even terrorist, as you imply, way of thinking. It is time that all American work together to solve our real problems and not the one that the plutarchs have for preserving their dynasties rather than serving the needs of the people.
Ron
The Life-long Pernicious Evil (Poetry) - 9/27/2026 5:02:07 PM
Your piece clearly shows how loyalty can turn into a way of enhancing the evil of a single individual, simply by going along, day by day, with the status quo…not thinking about one is doing.
Or, in the last stanzas, the thoughtless word or act with serious or long-term consequences, if not realized and revealed, recalling the missteps of my youth, can turn into insidious, internally held evil.
Ron
The Life-long Pernicious Evil (Poetry) - 9/27/2026 12:40:16 AM
This poem reads as a slow, powerful unveiling of evil, arriving not with fangs and a growl, but with paperwork, routines and the accumulation of random, unexamined choices we all make in life. From the vast machinery of genocide to the possibility of a single careless act unfolds as moral blindness in both nations and neighborhoods. The boy with the rock, one small gesture that turns into consequences he never imagined. Thought‑provoking, Odin and deeply felt by this reader.
The Life-long Pernicious Evil (Poetry) - 9/26/2026 4:30:48 PM
Some good images that under-gird your insights effectively. It's been proffered that the human heart holds both the sun and the storm, and evil is the storms whisper. As you seem to posit: the essence of evil is not a single, fixed entity, but a complex interplay of human choice, moral context, and relational existence. Speaking personally: relational existence with God the Creator is not only about personal devotion, but also about ethical alignment, moral responsibility, and the re-framing of evil through faith. Bottom line: Evil is a corrosive force, a parasite that feeds on goodness, a force that erodes moral integrity, and when you feed it, it becomes an insidious self-perpetuating force that corrupts, spreads like a virus, and undermines Truth and goodness. Thought-provoking. Thank you for sharing. r
Cherishing Sounds of Silence (Poetry) - 9/23/2026 12:31:37 AM
Some marvellous verses in this one, too many to enumerate, but they are there for the reading, bring silence, snow, moonlight to new heights. Silence, snow, moonlight, these things never felt so vocal under less experienced hands, a welcome reminder after all the increasing noise that we experience in our daily lives, both physical and mental. As you wrote silence is not emptiness but presence, an experience that say more than its silence. Indeed, the words, the verses, the symbols settle like snowfall into the reader's mind. Marvellous.
Cherishing Sounds of Silence (Poetry) - 9/22/2026 3:53:30 PM
Less noise in life.... Amen! Brought to mind Simon and Garfunkel's fantastic 1964 song: "Sounds of Silence." For some of us finding peace in silence is a deliberate choice. Peace in silence is not about escaping life, but more about engaging with it from a place of clarity and calm. Silence is a place that Michele and I are very familiar with. An interesting insight, Kent, with images worth pondering. Enjoyed. Peace. r
Cherishing Sounds of Silence (Poetry) - 9/22/2026 3:41:54 PM
Silence is golden. It gives time to think that is the fastest way to go to sleep.
But when age brings deafness. Communication with loved ones can be strained. Ron
Serrated Smiles (Poetry) - 9/22/2026 7:00:04 AM
The shark, even while hunting, is at least an 'honest' predator.
One that is recognisable and induces a suitable reaction.
And the reversed contrast between family and stranger speaks volumes here.
R
Understanding the Unexplainable (Poetry) - 9/20/2026 3:11:28 PM
Undoubtedly, there are those who reach a certain point in their lives where they feel they have all the answers they need and never progress further.
But you and I know that for every question answered, multiple new questions are raised. We can never know enough.
What we used to call research, can now be found by a simple request of an AI agent. But I am told that we need to go back to the original sources to verify what the AI agent has brought us.
AI is great for finding answers from the past, and for projecting the future using trends from the past, but so far, unable to discern future events that always have happened without any understanding beforehand that they would.
Ron
Understanding the Unexplainable (Poetry) - 9/20/2026 2:25:16 PM
A fine topic to explore, one that we all need to come to terms with. The mystery is with us, and it is here to stay. The overwhelming question remains: how do we address, speak to, unfold, come to terms with this mystery. No doubt everyone will come up with their own answer, as you have done here.
Each stanza widens the horizon rather than closing it. You frame unanswered questions not as failures of understanding but as companions that stay with us, shaping our inner landscape. That IMO is exactly how it should be. I also have written about this idea of mystery many times, never being fully satisfied with the result. The image of truths becoming familiar neighbors whose names we never quite learn deepens the question surrounding mystery. A thoughtful piece, full of mystery
Reality of Another Kind (Poetry) - 9/18/2026 6:58:13 PM
This piece unfolds like a slow descent into a carefully selected unreality, where wealth engineers its own atmosphere and the world below is left to breathe the smoke. Your images are vivid and unsettling — the silent luxury car, the marble that reflects only itself, the unopened books arranged as décor rather than wisdom. Then the powerful counterpoint: that small, unpurchased moment between child and worker. It’s a reminder that reality still flickers in human gestures even as systems try to overwrite it. The closing lines land exactly where they should — on the rare, fragile realness most people talk about but rarely see.
Reality of Another Kind (Poetry) - 9/18/2026 6:29:01 PM
A tree is on the increasing chasm between our people as the rich focus on wealth and pleasure, while the poor scramble for for the growing remnants of what used to be government services to dwindling every year as the problems in the heartland start to show like cracks in a pending earthquake.
The rich will blame the poor for not preparing and doing the right thing with their practices, while the poor will blame the rich, rightly so, for their indifference.
The vivid images in your writing here came through starkly real. I hope it's not too late to do something about it.
Ron
Finding Trust Again (Poetry) - 9/14/2026 7:02:50 PM
What a haunting piece! The lingering thoughts of trust lost. And how the encounter of a trusting dog makes all the difference.
Ron
Finding Trust Again (Poetry) - 9/14/2026 5:39:13 PM
trust is one of the issues of our times, or perhaps the lack of trust. Trust no one, as they say nowadays, especially as you lay out the lack of trust in this poem and how it shakes us to the roots.. The stray dog a metaphor for the blessed return of confidence, a small creature accepting bread and offering presence. There's plenty of trust in that to go around. Fine work.
Finding Trust Again (Poetry) - 9/14/2026 5:01:13 PM
This piece is easily construed as a metaphor for the human journey towards trusting; whether with animals, people, or even ourselves. That's a big one. Trusting self can be a can of worms. Trust, in my experiences, is always built through consistency, empathy, and the willingness to allow ourselves to be vulnerable with others, all lineaments that animals regularly embody in ways that humans sometimes forget. Trust is never built on a single interaction, but on repeated, patient, and consistent engagement. As it's been proffered: " Until one has loved an animal, a part of ones soul remains unawakened." Appreciated your thoughts. Peace. r
Aromalicious Memories (Poetry) - 9/13/2026 3:29:21 PM
This poem unfolds like a beautiful flowering garden of recollection, each scent rising with its own quiet truth. Interesting how the perfumes "climb the fences of memory" to establish themselves in their own right. A fine use of perfumes to stimulate the memories of your readers.
A Jungle-rain Pastorale (Poetry) - 9/11/2026 8:16:19 PM
Thoughts on the demise of humans brought on by ourselves. The warning that was given was meant to scare us into behaving well.
AI cannot go berserk, even though it can learn faster and faster as well as do things previously thought unattainable, all AI is under the control of humans. Good humans and bad humans.
You painted an idyllic scene with your poetry of the rain. More likely, the end of humans will bring with it destruction of the environment, it will take thousands of years to recover unless it is a bio agent. That would leave most of the biosphere intact and thriving on the rain.
The primates indicating a possibility of starting over.
Ron
Sediment Within the Soul (Poetry) - 9/8/2026 2:20:14 PM
No... we are not born completed. Becoming ourselves is not a single event, but a continuous process shaped by experience, self-knowledge, courage, balance, and wisdom. Each degree of authenticity we reach brings us closer to living in harmony with each of our true natures. Even though some aspects of our lives are beyond our control, (of which I will attest wholeheartedly) it's imperative that we work with our destiny, circumstances, fate, kismet, whatever you want to call it, with conscious choices, wise actions, and always in alignment with our spiritual beliefs and values. Another thought-provoking piece, Kent. Thanks. Hope you're well. Peace. r
Sediment Within the Soul (Poetry) - 9/7/2026 3:07:30 PM
In the Islamic tradition, the soul has seven stations ranging from the blameworthy soul at the bottom to the enlightened (full of light) soul at the top of the range. The soul is a reflective plate representing the essence of who the person is at any given time, the good with the bad, the shadow with the light.
Your presentation of destiny is similarly a fusion of wounds, wonders, refusals, welcomes—forming a kind of inner architecture of soul. That idea of becoming “by degrees” offers persistent hope, as though the soul is always in negotiation with the world and always capable of further refinement. Such food for thought and further reflection.
Life's Enormous Green Chest (Poetry) - 9/6/2026 5:24:22 PM
You have graciously traced the oxygen cycle that creates our wonderful, oxygen rich atmosphere. How we take it for granted until we find ourselves gasping for a breath and need it.
In the end you have informed us that the tragedy that is happening to our ecosystem may be a way for us to change in a more sustainable direction. I certainly hope so, if the power of poetry about great change.
Ron
Life's Enormous Green Chest (Poetry) - 9/6/2026 1:53:12 PM
Not perhaps, the poetry of air does know! ! Without air there would be no wind, no breath, no soul, and no spirit. Your poem on air feels like a slow, indrawn enriching breath—one that moves from the intimate to the planet with ease. I like how you let the green world rise and fall like a living breathing chest/ "What comes next, after the breathing ends?: Perhaps a different kind of breath, more enriching that we could ever imagine.
Roadkill Memoriam (Poetry) - 9/5/2026 9:01:12 PM
Oh, those poor animals! Your words offer powerful image of each roadkill animal, and I kept seeing each of them in my head.
Towards the end of the poem you brought the child into the poem, and as seen from the child's innocent eyes, the dead animals were offered flowers and it immediately eased the pain I felt for the dead animals.
Great job, Odin!!!
~ Sandie
Roadkill Memoriam (Poetry) - 9/5/2026 6:24:57 PM
Roadkill takes a tremendous number of wildlife species every year. Your work is a poignant tribute to their loss. Especially with the children quickly refocusing on the beauty along the highway rather than the dead. Children are like that… More so than adults.
Animal (and human) overpasses over heavily traveled roads like I 280 would help those animals you have to move to find new territory or migrate. Butterflies and birds, on the other hand tend to find our windshields and radiators.
I recall two stories like that. One was in one of those canteen adventure magazines about greedy teenagers who took great pleasure in running down animals on a beautiful road past small lakes. They ended up going off the road into deep water and they all died.
The second story was true. In our hometown a young man had a very successful sporting goods store. I remember going there and buying arrows to go late season deer hunting. He was an avid hunter who also liked to hunt with bow and arrow.
In the early morning on his way to go hunting deer, he either hit or try to avoid hitting a deer, rolled over, I believe in his new convertible, and his head was crushed. Roadkill revenge.
Ron
Roadkill Memoriam (Poetry) - 9/5/2026 1:53:44 PM
A treatise adeptly handled on a very harsh subject. You catalogue each fallen creature with such precise, humane imagery — the squirrel like a worn glove, the robin like spilled chokecherries — giving dignity to what most people refuse to see. The heart of the poem is the child: the one who still notices, still counts, still asks the questions adults have forgotten how to ask. Your closing sums it all up in the wildflowers along the shoulder as a kind of blessing and the child’s whisper that the animals “get flowers like we do in the cemetery" as a moving reminder that compassion still often survives in some who don't look away.
Serrated Smiles (Poetry) - 9/5/2026 1:46:45 PM
Oh what hidden treachery lies behind everyday smiles "folded neatly over hidden edges." The contrast you draw between human duplicity and the shark’s honest instinct is a notable apt image— the real danger isn’t in the deep, but in the familiar faces carrying hidden teeth. A sharp, unsettling, and beautifully crafted poem reflecting on the importance of trust while keeping vigilant of "swimming with the sharks.".
Serrated Smiles (Poetry) - 9/4/2026 6:21:44 PM
In this piece, you have described life as a Shark Tank. I hope that there are some sincere smiles near you and in your future. Like the smile and laughter of a great great grandchild who runs happily to you for a big hug.
Ron
Shaved Reflections (Poetry) - 8/31/2026 6:43:46 PM
A beautiful written morning self assessment while saving. Some men to avoid it by not shaving… But periodically have to trim the unruly mess of hair that gets way out of line as we age. Once again, the quiet revelation at the end really tops it off.
Made me a bit nostalgic about when a man would stop by the barbershop in the morning to pick up the latest gossip, perhaps read a bit of the newspaper and have a barber give him a clean, expert shave and trim if necessary.
I had one of those this morning without going to the barbershop. Makes getting in front of the mirror to do some introspection difficult, though.
Ron
Shaved Reflections (Poetry) - 8/31/2026 5:14:39 PM
Taking the ritual of shaving into a new and revealing symbolic level. You capture the morning ritual as an exploration, each stroke of the razor revealing not just skin but the layered truths a man carries with him, especially in the face. The poem shifts from physical detail to emotional terrain, ending with that powerful realization that the mirror shows not loss, but endurance, "how much of him survived.".
Hunting for Truth (Poetry) - 8/31/2026 5:08:23 PM
We need to assert more and more the importance of standing by the truth. Your imagery makes truth feel like a living force struggling to breathe beneath layers of imitation. The quiet birth of a lie becomes a full architecture of illusion which sounds remarkably familiar to what is going on now in our politics. That final thought—truth speaking into a world that no longer remembers its voice — an unsettling piece reminding us of what is sorely lacking in today's world.
Hunting for Truth (Poetry) - 8/31/2026 4:10:04 PM
"but that when truth finally speaks,
no one alive remembers its voice."
Is an ominous for telling of the decline of human intelligence. It does seem like so many prefer the calm soothing optimism of the lie over the reality of the truth. You are a master at pointing that out.
Once again filled with metaphors and similes, you seem to predict apocalyptic direction for humankind. I think we may have to endure a reset, put in the end truth will prevail.
Ron
Hunting for Truth (Poetry) - 8/30/2026 4:44:20 PM
Authenticity, deception, and the paradox of truth. The truth is being blurred purposely now. A.I. is helping do that. It is effectively blurring authenticity and deception. A.I. generated content is rampant. Deep fakes are being used regularly for political propaganda and entertainment. A.I. companions impersonate trusted human figures to influence human behavior which creates a form of undisclosed deception that seriously exploits and undermines emotional bonds. Manipulated images, videos, and synthetic voices all can mimic reality so convincingly that audiences don't even realize they are encountering a fabrication. I don't want to belabor this. But this is a war that humanity has never faced before.
.
Why it matters? Because A.I. can create false realities and manipulate beliefs without detection, which seriously challenges our ability to verify TRUTH and control information. A.I.s ability to simulate authenticity is both a creative tool and a potential weapon. Without implementing safeguards, without spiritual wisdom and discernment, the risk of A.I. reshaping what we consider real, and what we believe as Truth, will radically alter society. Enjoyed the images and metaphors, Kent. Stimulated thought, which is always welcome in this camp. Peace. rlc
Wordsmith Provocateur (Poetry) - 8/30/2026 2:02:28 PM
For to lift the reader is akin
To a magic carpet lifting the child in all of us."
How beautifully put this desire, this mandate of the poet/ This poem feels like a masterclass in revealing the hidden agenda of poetry and its implicit effort. Your imagery of the poet as a prospector in the cold river of language is well put — capturing both the grit and the grace of the mysterious craft of writing poetry. You honor the quiet, stubborn pursuit of the one true word, and you let that pursuit shine with real humility and wonder. A fine beautiful tribute to the art of writing poetry as only a true poet could envision.
Cage of Discontent (Poetry) - 8/30/2026 1:56:17 PM
"Launching words like sparks from a shorted fire." Yes, how apt the image. This is precisely what we would like, what we should do in protest to much of what we see and experience these days. To speak out against the onslaught. The way you braid the spider, the pencil, and the restless parrot into one interior landscape is noteworthy. The poem feels like a diagnostic scan of our modern landscape, yet it still finds a window of possibility. That last question lingers beautifully, like a soft click of hope inside the mind’s machinery.
Cage of Discontent (Poetry) - 8/29/2026 1:13:47 AM
Love the last line of this well crafted gem. I think we’re entangled in our own web of busy. Bombarded with trivia knowledge. Perhaps, we should build cages of a different kind. A calm shelter.
Cage of Discontent (Poetry) - 8/28/2026 7:12:23 PM
I have mixed thoughts about what you have written, especially the parrot. It would seem that the parrot could be a well-known figure. But then, as I read further, it could be all of us caged buy our circumstances and unable even with a pencil to write down our discontent for the world to see.
But then, the pendulum swings back, the spider retreats and creates a new web. The cage opens and our discontent is set free, to fly out the open window to a better world.
Reminding you that I am terrible at understanding poetry.
Ron
Unborn Century's Wall Carvings (Poetry) - 8/25/2026 11:34:15 AM
This piece feels like a carving made not into a wall but directly into time itself. Your imagery gives the future a physical presence, as though the unborn century is already pressing its symbols into stone. There’s a haunting quality and a kind of clarity in how you lay out humanity’s passage thru time — a reminder that what we inscribe today becomes the architecture others must inherit. Many insightful thoughts here to ponder..
Unborn Century's Wall Carvings (Poetry) - 8/24/2026 9:38:34 AM
Very artistic and creative, but I would think that, since history created symbols to pass down to the future, images of current artifacts will not be carved on cave walls symbolically but tucked away under Internet formats for everyone to see and actually create they want, to play with thousands of years from now. Not in museums or buried under layers of silt. But part of the garbage of technology we thought was so important that the future will laugh at.
Ron
Raindrop Wanderings (Poetry) - 8/24/2026 9:28:09 AM
What a beautiful way to trace the water cycle! One of your best the way you cover all aspects of water's movement through that won cycle that brings us freshwater even though we try so hard to destroy that freshness unknowingly with our rush to consume every product thrown at us by advertising. A poignant way to look at it, like the little child.
When I was standing alongside a doctoral student, marble like a child at Niagara Falls. He said, "I wonder where all that water comes from?" He should've known. But he was very politically savvy and retired recently as dean emeritus and professor of science and technology at Kent State University.
So many don't know where our water comes from…if only way they would read your work here.
Risk to Allow (Poetry) - 8/23/2026 5:22:48 PM
A powerful poem on how life asks us to trust the uncertainty we all must face in our lives. Your images—dawn as a wound, fire as a tame sun, seeds returning wearing leaves—capture the beauty inside all risks we face in life.. The closing moment with the son’s leap is unforgettable, a risk of faith that is well worth it.
Raindrop Wanderings (Poetry) - 8/23/2026 5:12:26 PM
A gentle, luminous meditation on the life of a raindrop. I love how you turn water into a wandering soul—gathering stories, burdens, and beauty before rising clean again. The imagery is tender on the one hand yet profound on the other. A lovely poem.
Risk to Allow (Poetry) - 8/23/2026 8:15:55 AM
You are describing freedom. The willingness to push the veil of safety to learn. To learn what is possible and what is not. Without taking risks, children don't learn that life can sometimes be harsh and they need to be able to learn how to defend themselves against that possibility.
I'm forever grateful that my father allowed me to make many mistakes as I learned how to navigate life. But I recall vividly a few times that he stepped in and saved me from serious trouble.
Ron
Scarring Begets Courage (Poetry) - 8/18/2026 5:13:49 AM
Scarring begets courage and courage begets survival. The litany of troubles that can scar a person's life laid out in this poem and vivid images, the goodbye as wrecking ball, trust as a broken down, the days as mirrors marred by breath and memory. The poems shift comes with forgiveness that arrives quietly, not as a trumpet but as ivy the covers the scars of life. Your poem ends on a whole food, charming note, the image of the boy with a scraped elbow with healing is a companion to injury. Beautifully rendered.
Scarring Begets Courage (Poetry) - 8/17/2026 12:40:36 PM
A super reminder that scars don’t have to define us but can become part of what gives us courage.
I love the thought that healing doesn’t erase the injury, but teaches us how to live with it. The child proudly displaying his bandage brings the poem back to where courage often begins, dusting off, getting back up, and carrying on deffo a most encouraging read.
Scarring Begets Courage (Poetry) - 8/17/2026 9:43:53 AM
Courage takes on many forms as you have so beautifully described, Often, it's the silent stand against oppression that eventually crumbles and falls from its own weight.
For every hero that shines in the light of courage, there are hundreds of heroes who never get any recognition except the satisfaction of standing up against what is wrong.
Ron
Nightmare Rehearsal (Poetry) - 8/17/2026 9:22:53 AM
Very emotional and personal. The more one has lived life, particularly in the spotlight and through many iterations…wives, children, associations, success, failure and abuse of the mind and body, the greater these dreams as the mind sorts through the past, trying to put things in their proper order.
You seem to be weathering them well. And by reporting, help rid yourself of these tormenting memories twisted by dream.
Ron
Nightmare Rehearsal (Poetry) - 8/16/2026 8:03:54 AM
Dreams such as these can feel unpleasant, haunting even, as the mind descends somehow into some kind of macabre theater that you wouldn't pay to watch. The imagery — memories drifting like masked actors, fears unfolding black wings, clocks grinding their teeth — gives the dreamworld a vivid, cinematic feel, like watching a film in a darkened room. The final turn into wakefulness feels like a blessing as that "silver hand sweeping aside the curtain" lets in the daylight to hear the Moonlight Sonata no less. A fitting ending indeed, with reality ending the nightmare.
Anger's Toxicity Surrenders (Poetry) - 8/15/2026 10:59:20 AM
As others have noted, this poem captures anger with striking clarity—how it gathers, distorts, and consumes, yet can be reshaped into something steadier and humane. Perhaps many of the emotions are like that, with their positive and negative side. At the end the offer of hope from turbulence to quiet control, command even; a final stillness that feels earned. A powerful reminder that transformation begins with a single breath.
Anger's Toxicity Surrenders (Poetry) - 8/15/2026 9:43:14 AM
Another mighty poem from your pen, certainly a reminder that anger can be like drinking poison and hoping it harms someone else.
I too particularly enjoyed how the poem moves beyond simply condemning anger and explores what can happen when that powerful energy is redirected.
The imagery is strong, and the ending beautifully captures the quiet that comes when we choose not to let anger take control - a reflective and encouraging piece.
Anger's Toxicity Surrenders (Poetry) - 8/15/2026 8:18:38 AM
Love the image and its symbolism. The hammer and the forge channeling anger into beauty. So much of anger is destructive when you point out how it can be creative.
A great lesson for those who can't control their anger like we see road rage incidents.
Ron
Boundless Love (Poetry) - 8/12/2026 11:58:29 AM
A wonderful use of the gardener and the split tree to illustrate endless love. The image is perfect for the piece as well.
The idea that love flows from us rings true. Love is really the search for acceptance by all things, the quest for knowledge and understanding.
As one who has hugged many trees to climb them by shinning up, I never met a tree whose bark I didn't love. All beautifully different, yet the same.
Ron
Quest For Inner Peace (Poetry) - 8/12/2026 11:34:03 AM
So glad that you have reached a peaceful point in your life where you can write your thoughts every day and contemplate. Perhaps you should write your storied life in an autobiography. If only for your family.
I too, am at relative peace reaching that point in my life although I'm not sure I will make it to that lofty age with seven years to go.
Ron
Boundless Love (Poetry) - 8/10/2026 2:02:42 PM
Your poem carries an unmistakable truth — that love doesn’t just mend what’s broken, it transforms the one who offers it. The image of the wounded tree and the healing hand feels both tender and elemental. A beautiful reminder that restoration often moves in both directions, from one to another.
Contemporary Weigh Stations (Poetry) - 8/9/2026 9:25:57 AM
Modern life as “weigh stations” where we’re forced to pause and measure what we’re carrying. Here we see technology not as villain or savior, but as a force that constantly redraws the landscape we’re trying to walk through. The real burden isn’t the future rushing toward us, but our reluctance to let go of what no longer serves us. Clear insight delivered with your inventive blend of imagery and philosophical calm.
Quest For Inner Peace (Poetry) - 8/9/2026 9:00:40 AM
A beautifully paced reflection on the long arc of a human life filled with imagery and symbols that shine. The heart running as a deer, dreams as glass lanterns in a storm, love as lightning in summer fields, all shine through into the reader's perception to highlight the exquisite feeling of what it means to be human. The flaming urgency of youth, the dense, weathered middle years, and finally the luminous late-life stillness where people is no longer chased but quietly arrives at our doorstep. The final image of the singing bowl, widening until bowl, sky, breath, and silence become united as one refined sense of peace. A serene poem on the miracle of peacefulness.
Beholden To? (Poetry) - 8/7/2026 5:26:14 PM
A powerful journey that begins in the stars and end in a kind of final reckoning at a still pond., to see one's own reflection holding the key., ending with the final reckoning embedded in a question, beholden to the self that chose to believe I was. Interesting.
Beholden To? (Poetry) - 8/7/2026 11:34:00 AM
A cool question. A lot of introspection in this piece. I believe the key refers to understanding or opening the door to what you're alive should be, and wasn't before.
By using the key, you were free.
Great matching image.
Ron
Our Carousel Within (Poetry) - 8/4/2026 8:56:39 AM
So true. The way that family and society conditions everyone to toe the line that keeps the child from innocence and adventure.. For those of us like you who have escaped that merry go round, the carousel opens a whole new vista of imagination.
So beautifully written and even illustrated. Kudos.
I was reminded of Josh Gates, the archaeologist and explorer who has the television show, Expedition Unknown.
He seems easily able to get to go on adventures to find the answers to many myths and historical accounts with very energetic and childlike wonder. Upon making a discovery, he calls out how happy is to have found something interesting. I enjoy just following him on his adventures. Wishing I was alongside.
Ron
Our Carousel Within (Poetry) - 8/3/2026 12:17:34 PM
The innocence of childhood is clearly on evidence in this fine poem. The imagery of wonder under all the machinery of adulthood is quite telling of what is possible.. The final image, of the child waiting like an ember, offers real, tangible hope. A fine reminder that imagination is not lost only waiting to be rediscovered and found again.
Dust Befriends Dust (Poetry) - 8/2/2026 8:07:52 AM
You leave a lot to contemplate in this insightful piece. A longer look at our Earth shows multiple mass extinctions. All leading to the remarkable ability of Homo sapiens to rise from the dust. But we can't stop conquering. Around 1910 there were about 120 car companies in the United States, electric, steam and gasoline. How many are there now?
Data centers from competing companies are being overbuilt throughout the country. Eventually there will be mergers and most of those data centers will become obsolete very quickly and left to be dismantled or go to rust, rust dust.
Let us know if we will come to our senses before we are gone.
Ron
Waifs in Peril (Poetry) - 8/1/2026 12:43:25 PM
Every line in this very poignant piece shouts like the first…"the world's moral compass spins like a damaged weather vane."
Charity can't handle the need. We all have to.
Ron
Waifs in Peril (Poetry) - 8/1/2026 9:03:04 AM
Your poetic prosity here gives voice to those whose stories are often reduced to statistics, with stark imagery that stares at the reader straight on: razor‑wire borders, smoke‑stained memories, passports heavier than heartbeats. What stands out most is the way you speak of hope: not a triumphant banner, but a trembling match cupped in human hands, fragile yet persistent. a compassionate poem for a world that has lost its bearings, highlighting the human cost behind every headline.
Why Courage? (Poetry) - 8/1/2026 6:48:06 AM
The poems feels like a lantern held in a darkened room. Courage not as heroic flare but as a quiet, necessary companion—something that steadies the breath, aligns the spine, and reminds us that the future is still possible. Indeed, let's reclaim the small, daily acts of bravery that shape a life.
Why Courage? (Poetry) - 7/31/2026 1:46:59 PM
You covered a vast array of courageous behavior. But the one I like the best is the courage to admit one is wrong and then continue on.
I have to give credit to the courage of so many that helped me over the years when others would turn their noses up as though not willing to lower themselves to do what I simply needed, like pumping my gasoline or emptying my urine bag.
Ron
Running On Empty (Poetry) - 7/28/2026 5:36:22 PM
Your poem captures exhaustion with an honesty that feels lived in. The images of stalled motion—machines, bodies, spirits—feel deeply human, and the moment when help arrives with “a can of gold fire” is a beautiful metaphor for how compassion refuels us. The closing insight, that self‑love is the fuel we most often forget, gives the piece an unexpected power.
Running On Empty (Poetry) - 7/27/2026 9:58:53 AM
Life is hard whether we be rich or poor. Once we realize that, I think we can have a full tank of whatever we need to go to the distance.
And your mention of having someone or something to love that gives you love back also enhances and refills the tank of our lives.
Very nice metaphor indeed.
Perhaps the greatest tank fillers are caregivers for the disabled. Imagine the wakefulness at night of taking care of the baby for a few months, turned into years of taking care of someone disabled. Few are up to the task. Their tanks are not full enough.
Ron
Courage Knows Not Retreat (Poetry) - 7/26/2026 11:06:44 AM
I sense you might be writing about how women, in the 20th century, worked hard to leave the stereotype of mother and nurturer of children. Always in the backdrop, never taking center stage except in the home where they were required to keep the home for their man regardless of how hard it was..
Since then women have made great strides and have even broken the glass ceiling where they are sometimes CEOs, Prime Ministers or presidents.
My partner and I have a 90/10 relationship. She takes care of 90% of the household and me. She also is the owner of her own successful business and supports some members of her family. Those around her think she is superwoman. I agree. Without her, my life probably would be miserable.
Ron
Courage Knows Not Retreat (Poetry) - 7/26/2026 9:31:52 AM
Your words lay upon the page with your familiar clarity — courage as something lived, not claimed. You remind us that the soul’s forward motion is its proof, that retreat is only for those who’ve never truly stepped into themselves and/or taken ownership. Your voice carries that steady flame so familiar to me as a reader, urging readers toward a road that offers challenge and in the acceptance reveals. Powerful, timely piece.
Custodians All (Poetry) - 7/25/2026 12:12:06 PM
Not since Carl Sagan's description of our Little Blue Dot, have I read a more poignant plea that should be read far and wide to bring everyone down to the essence of who we really are and why we are here.
I often feel like I've failed in my custodial duties. Living the suburban lifestyle that takes so much and gives so little. Still, I find that nature has a way of utilizing every wild space of this suburban concrete jungle. I'm grateful for that.
I just read about a man who died from Houston on his organic farm. I never wanted to be a farmer, but his was a noble life compared to mine. In the middle of the greatest empire to fossil fuels that ever existed.
Ron
Custodians All (Poetry) - 7/25/2026 9:35:13 AM
Humanity has sadly failed in our stewardship of God's Earth. Human beings are retreating from critical engagement. And far too many now prioritize comfort over challenge, and neglect their role in cultivating the ethical and imaginative capacities needed for sustainable and ethical stewardship. Recently I viewed satellite images of the Tijuana River (literally a river of shit) flowing into the ocean in southern San Diego. The people that dwell in the Imperial Beach area describe "an intense acidic stench of raw sewage penetrating your nose and clinging to the back of your throat." It's been going on for years.
.
As Wendel Barry proffered: losing stewardship of our planet means "becoming outcasts from the great neighborhood of creation." I would imagine that the greatest threat to our planet now is laboring under the delusion that someone else is going to save it. Your thoughts and imagery lay it out, Kent, and I found myself shaking my head in agreement as I read. Thank you for sharing. Peace. r
Custodians All (Poetry) - 7/25/2026 7:07:18 AM
We have a responsibility that we don't seem to realize that we have to pay attention to. We are mere borrowers in a world that we didn't create You fill your poem with images that make your point, namely that nature is above all generous with its blessings while we are unbelievably careless in our dealings with the gifts that nature offers us. The final image of the wilted daisy in a grandparent's hand is unforgettable. A bold reminder that responsibility to our surroundings comes with being alive.
A Wordsmith's Journey (Poetry) - 7/21/2026 3:24:58 AM
The journey that a writer takes through travel, silence, study, and the courage to be informed and shaped by feedback and criticism. You trace language from the streets of distant cities to the quiet forests where meaning deepens, and then back to the childhood spark of Dr. Seuss. There is a sense of continuity between the lines, showing how every influence becomes part of a larger creative identity. Such an interesting journey.
Ownership of Oneslf (Poetry) - 7/21/2026 2:34:23 AM
Succinctly expressed as always. And, as always, a joy to read.
Oddly enough, I took '3 Way Mirror' from the bookshelf yesterday, to read again... Today, this appears in front of me
~ That's what I'd call 'synchronicity'.
R.
A Wordsmith's Journey (Poetry) - 7/20/2026 9:22:05 AM
The writer depicts the alphabet as a living multi-sensory force rooted in nature, personal experience, and as the foundation for poetic expression. Offering the poet/writer a fertile palette to explore the alphabet as both a fixed system, and a living evolving force. An 'authentic poet' questions the humdrum use of language, and purposes to resist (or circumvent) the mechanical, repetitive, or superficial use of it. Opting instead to become a voice that reshapes language, making it more creatively expressive, authentic, and alive. And yes.... Dr. Seuss was one of the few human beings whose wisdom transcends age. Reminding children and adults alike to be ourselves, pursue knowledge, act with purpose, and always seek out joy in life's journey. A colorfully imaged poetic exploration, biographical in nature, that offers the reader deeper insight into the writers life. Thanks for sharing. r
A Wordsmith's Journey (Poetry) - 7/20/2026 7:41:49 AM
You are the master wordsmith of metaphor and simile. I marvel at how you stitch together unrelated concepts into meaningful phrases and sentences. It's a real talent that I don't have.
When we went to the library in my second grade class, I rushed to get the Dr. Seuss books. Not only did they have crazy rhymes and goofy characters, each one seemed to have a moral or even an ecological lesson. One especially about cutting trees to make a product, reminds me of what happened to Easter Island. As though he already knew that story and put it in one of his books.
But I struggled with grammar and therefore missed out on some of the greatest literature in eighth grade. Too busy with crazy outdoor activities at home to read. Perhaps why I'm not a great writer today like you are.
Ron
Joy of the Job (Poetry) - 7/19/2026 2:22:56 PM
If only we could get those burning the candle on both ends to follow your sage advice in this work, the world would be a calmer, better place.
In my brief run through business and academic endeavor, I have known bosses that don't boss are the best at getting their people to do the impossible dream and enjoy themselves while doing it.
The others, often ill prepared to take on leadership, think that by browbeating and ordering they can achieve greater efficiency or whatever and end up making life miserable for those working for them.
On the other hand, when one reaches retirement, like I have, I get up every morning and do what I want. Un beholden to anyone who gives me a paycheck.
Ron
Joy of the Job (Poetry) - 7/19/2026 6:28:02 AM
This poem highlights of truth of work with simple clarity, how the right work lifts the spirit and the wrong work grinds it down. Your multiple symbolic images hit the mark, making the contrast vivid and memorable. The closing lines, especially, remind us how meaningful work carries its light home to the people who depend on us. Well said.
Behavior's Tectonic Shift (Poetry) - 7/18/2026 11:54:38 AM
Yes, we are in for a tumultuous change, depicted by the tornado in the background in your image. And, a resurgence of creativity like never seen before. Love your final lesson.
What we needed in the beginning was a complete knowledge, stored in our brain alone, of our surroundings…what was good and what was bad…what was food and what was poison. Our living parents and grandparents taught us everything we needed to know to continue surviving in a very harsh world.
With modern civilization, that world no longer exists. Everything depends on everything else, not nature anymore.
The tables have turned. No one has to memorize anything anymore, except perhaps, a vocabulary for communication that is generally picked up automatically by most of us along with our language.
So much of what is called teaching is merely rote repetition–memorization. The old way of proving things by physical experiment and library search taking months and years can be found in a few seconds. With our minds free from all of the drudgery of composition, we can open our minds more to creativity…the essence of your prosetry.
AI can do the math, give us options and priorities/probabilities. Help us create the future and do it quicker and better. If that is a threat, so be it.
Ron
Behavior's Tectonic Shift (Poetry) - 7/18/2026 10:54:34 AM
A striking piece that captures the psychological upheaval that we are now witnessing in our era with imagery that feels both seismic as well as poignant. I especially admire the closing verses—the crow, the elephant, the sky, and the AI suspended between them. It’s a powerful reversal: the machine learning not efficiency, but wonder. A vivid portrayal about how the disruption of these times might still lead us back to something essential that we can still (hopefully) find within ourselves..
Behavior's Tectonic Shift (Poetry) - 7/18/2026 9:47:15 AM
Artificial Intelligence will never be a substitute for human intelligence, creativity, or curiosity. We can only hope and pray that it will develop as a tool to enhance those qualities. People would do well to remain cautious about AI's potential to erode human uniqueness. We need to reflect deeply on how we should guide AI's development to preserve and enrich the human spirit, not replace it. AI's most insidious risk may not be its technical abilities, but humanities ever present profit-driven tendency to exploit it without sufficient ethical guardrails. A thought-provoking write with some memorable images. Thanks for sharing. r
Heart-Room's Journey (Poetry) - 7/18/2026 8:02:30 AM
I've been reading and watching TV lately about the brain and heart and their connections to life. Both are boring and difficult to try and assimilate compared to your mystical narrative of wonder and excitement. It's like comparing a paddle to an internat combustion engine as each propels us over rapids, and through death-defying waters down a canyon. That is a poor analogy, I know, but my brain is always at work trying to simplify, simplify economics at work when I should be thinking creatvely about the beauty of life.
Heart-Room's Journey (Poetry) - 7/18/2026 6:49:40 AM
You’ve built one of your most luminous heart-rooms yet, Odin. The way you trace its evolution—from cradle-shell to cosmic chamber—feels both intimate and mythic. I admire how you let the heart gather seasons, visitors, scars, and light, all without losing its softness. The closing transformation into starlight, yes turning mortality into expansion rather than ending. A beautifully written piece.
Heart-Room's Journey (Poetry) - 7/17/2026 2:33:22 PM
In this extensive explanation, you have given the heart not only its passage through time but its allegorical relationship to everything in a life.
While the blood pumps to every part of the human body, the mind expands the heart into a lifetime of thoughts and experiences wrapped into one tether of veinous existence.
Magnificent image, too.
Ron
The Quiet Wealth of Enough (Poetry) - 7/17/2026 9:53:55 AM
So beautifully written. The zest for life turned into the burden of desire over need.
Fortunately, I've always lived a minimalist life. Rarely jumping on the latest trend or deal. My only need is to earn enough each year to pay for my caregivers. Anything in excess will be given away upon my death to good causes.
That's why I feel both wealthy and happy in my old age.
Ron
Ownership of Oneslf (Poetry) - 7/14/2026 7:03:42 PM
Nobody explores the world of words with the dignity you express so eloquently. Your last verse is an incredible summary of life. I am in awe of your skills, craftsmanship, and insights into the human psyche of what to hold in esteem, and what to avoid.
Ownership of Oneslf (Poetry) - 7/14/2026 6:49:22 AM
"The old SUV rolls onward..." an apt way of putting it. Made me chuckle, because I still drive a 2002 Jeep Wrangler Sahara with the straight six; the best motor Jeep ever made. You write about self-awareness, gratefulness, accountability, and the courage to shape your life, as a kind of foundation for personal freedom, integrity, and lasting growth. I agree. With the right attitude we can remain active, creative, and purposeful well into later years. Enjoyed the imagery and message. Thanks for sharing. r
The Quiet Wealth of Enough (Poetry) - 7/12/2026 9:35:42 AM
Reminds me of my own poems on the word enough: the never enough of enough and/or that enough is possibly not, if ever enough. Love the wordplay that this word invites. The imagery you invoke has a simplicity that can be felt: the cold water, dry socks, and warm bread move into the deeper, quieter riches of belonging and purpose. The imagery is vivid, grounded, and wise—an invitation to remember that contentment is not less but more, the truest one, and that is enough.
Reality as Hostage (Poetry) - 7/12/2026 9:29:15 AM
I love your opening: Reality as a vacancy sign outside an abandoned motel. Then truth arrived with a "forget passport". The imagery is stunning and of course telling, capturing the slow corrosion of truth with striking clarity, based on what we are witnessing in today's world, especially the world of power and the world of politics. A sober poem that confronts the cultural drift toward unreality of today's world, timely and incisive.
Reality as Hostage (Poetry) - 7/11/2026 10:19:20 AM
Quite a rant. Reminded me of Descartes "I think therefore I am," suggesting that consciousness is the foundation of reality, and that our awareness confirms our personal existence. Clearly one persons opinions of reality are deeply tied to their personal perceptions, beliefs, and mental framework - inviting reflection on whether or not we should seek to align with objective reality, or just remain open to the reality we personally construct for ourselves. Your thoughts images and metaphors, Kent, reflect an interesting range of philosophical stances, from existential pessimism, to ironic self-awareness. All of which can be interpreted by the reader as the writer seeing the world as being fundamentally flawed or twisted in some way. So.... what would you do to make it better? Thanks for sharing. r
My Rainbow (Poetry) - 7/10/2026 3:10:49 PM
This one was not only tracing your inspiration, but inspiring for anyone to read it. One of your very best.
Ron
My Rainbow (Poetry) - 7/10/2026 10:06:30 AM
Before the vision of the rainbow lies the effort to climb closer and see it, the way you transform hardship into illumination: every scar becoming a contour line, every storm a whetstone, every setback a necessary shaping of the self. The final revelation is beautiful: that the rainbow was never fleeing, but waiting—growing into something the child could not yet reach, but the adult could finally its colors earn.
Love's Fragile Strength (Poetry) - 7/7/2026 1:07:39 PM
It was a pleasure reading and analyzing your writing you’re doing fantastic work. It’s always motivating to see such creativity. Are you working on a story these days?
Love's Fragile Strength (Poetry) - 7/6/2026 11:54:31 AM
Love is a never-ending subject and you have used it once again to show us the way to honor its fragility in your unique style of metaphor and simile.
You wrote about openness. I have always been that way. But when it comes to love and emotions, I have not been that good at it. Losing some, but gaining more as I age.
Those early infatuations that you referred to never really got very far before they ended.
Ron
Love's Fragile Strength (Poetry) - 7/6/2026 9:58:21 AM
Without a doubt, love is the strongest and most fragile thing humans have in life. Speaking personally: one of the worst feelings we can experience is knowing that someone you talked to, shared with, and loved every day, doesn't care about you anymore. Unfortunately, many take more than they give, and that will undermine any relationship. Sincere deep love is not just about being seen and valued, it's also about choosing to love and support another with authentic sincerity and commitment. Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, and loving another deeply gives them strength. And that strength together is a bond and a force that is hard to defeat.
Here the writer suggests that love, in it's purest form, can circle back around (transformed by time and experience) and blossom again under kinder skies. Perhaps that's true. But what I've learned (and know as a fact) is that being there, showing up, listening, and always giving more than you receive, makes the most lasting difference in a relationship, and helps keep the weeds and rodents and diseases out of the garden. I wish the writer well. Thank you for sharing such personal thoughts. Peace. rlc
Life's Grammatical Imperative (Poetry) - 7/6/2026 8:43:02 AM
As a long teacher of English grammar, I thoroughly enjoyed the way you turned grammar into a kind of living body, beyond the body of structure for words that it represents. Here we have the hunt for verbs, the peril of a noun suspended without motion, the wreckage of misspelled ambitions, a portrait of our lives all assembled thru the symbolism of language and its grammar. God forbid that we end up as a "dangling participle" stagnating without movement "swinging above a blank page" wishing to be the expression of better grammar. Thoroughly enjoyed this one.
Life's Grammatical Imperative (Poetry) - 7/5/2026 1:32:41 PM
Well written and grammatically correct. I was going to get you on the hanging participle but you got me first.
Will we ever get our grammar correct? Probably not as long as we write. But I never want to leave a widow all alone with no other words to comfort her. By all means use widow suppression for its great expression.
Intensely enjoyed,
Ron
Today's Lady Justice in Peril (Poetry) - 7/5/2026 12:16:37 PM
The pendulum is swinging back toward the the left with each lie that passes through even with Supreme Court review.
The righteous right are being proven wrong, by lower courts that still have some freedom from the corruption that seems to have captured every high office in the land.
If not in the midterm, by the end of the reign of orange, it should have swung back far enough to restore sanity and some checks and balances that are now missing.
Ron
Life's Grammatical Imperative (Poetry) - 7/4/2026 8:13:32 PM
"And when he began the last chapter,
he found the premise hidden in plain sight:
Without movement,
a man becomes a dangling participle of stagnation,
swinging above a blank page,
forever an unfinished ending."
... to soar
... to hide
... to lead
... to follow
... to ?
Which to we choose to be our imperative path?
I choose to love this poem. :)
~jeanne
Today's Lady Justice in Peril (Poetry) - 7/3/2026 8:54:26 AM
The unsettling moment we are living thru nicely captured in this poem where Lady Justice herself is pushed to the bring by the choices and failures of those entrusted with her care. You frame the crisis not as abstract politics but as a moral pulse, reminding us that when justice falters, the whole human fabric can unravel. A call to vigilance, to conscience, to courage in the face of fire consequences.
Arrival (Poetry) - 6/30/2026 12:08:30 PM
Once again, your view of life stages. Each one revealing its unique characteristic. Especially the last stage, were you describe how simple and quiet things have become.
When I look back at what I did in earlier years, I'm amazed at what I crammed into each year. And I did it with the ease of youth. Unfettered by the demands of 21st century living.
Your perspective on life is very admirable and should be emulated by those who read you.
Ron
Pandemic of Absence (Poetry) - 6/30/2026 11:27:19 AM
There were darker times than you reiterate here. I see what's happening as just a blip in the course of history where the wealthy and powerful are trying to control, like they always have before. But the arc of history is for the meek and loving.
The way your prosetry ends in this piece. Astutely observed, as always.
Ron
I apologize for my absence. I was proofing my book of short stories and creating a cover for it. I learned that the copyright office frowns on the use of AI images on book covers. Did it anyway.
Arrival (Poetry) - 6/30/2026 3:33:48 AM
A life examined with the clarity that only can come from looking from the distance. the verses in the final movement are especially poignant: the single table, the modest meal, the candle discovering it has always been enough. It’s a rare thing to write about reduction without making it sound like loss. Here, becoming less is revealed as a form of arrival, an emptiness finally filled. This feels like every line has been lived.
Arrival (Poetry) - 6/29/2026 9:25:58 PM
Brilliant ... I am in awe, so much in awe that I am at a loss of words to express my admiration and appreciation of "Arrival."
"Age does not arrive with thunder
but with the slow erasure of unnecessary lines.
I trade the chandelier for a window,
the layered noise for a single note held long.
Routines narrow with grace:
wake, stretch, attend, release,
like a tide that no longer floods the shore."
jeanne
Pandemic of Absence (Poetry) - 6/28/2026 12:15:23 PM
Overwhelming with boldness, enlightenment, and wisdom.
Pandemic of Absence (Poetry) - 6/28/2026 9:10:48 AM
Your poem feels like a diagnosis of the age and you have really laid it out with a knife-like incision. Your imagery is both visceral and eerily familiar, yet you still manage to locate that fragile ember beneath the ash. At the end you appeal to inwardness, toward gentleness, precisely what the world and its peoples need, a reminder that love begins as a quiet, interior rebellion to the existing signs of the times.
Have You Ever... (Poetry) - 6/27/2026 8:36:07 AM
You ask the reader numerous times Have You Ever and my short answer is: Yes, I have. I have, for example, looked at and contemplated the industry of the worker ant, the worker bee and marvelled at such industry. But I have never put my words and any related insights together as you have in this remarkable poem. We struggle under the weight of memory, meaning and the need for us to desperately matter while the industrious worker ant goes about its business with quiet wisdom. At the end of the poem, kneeling and wondering before its own insight. Fine work here, as Richard wrote, exceptional.
Lif'es Baggage (Poetry) - 6/27/2026 8:28:44 AM
There is an unmistakable sense of liberation and the resulting freedom between the lines of this evocative poem. You honor the weight of life without being burdened down by it. "Carry what healed instead of what hurt," love that line. Some beautiful, compelling insights here.
Have You Ever... (Poetry) - 6/27/2026 7:55:29 AM
The metaphors and imagery in this piece are exceptional. It invites the reader to reflect on social organization, survival and resilience, work ethic, and how the ants industriousness, teamwork, and adaptability can serve as models for human behavior. But then again..... as Lewis Thomas pointed out: "Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm Fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves - they do everything humans do but watch television." Enjoyed this. Another thought-provoking insight. Well done. rlc
Surviving Success (Poetry) - 6/26/2026 5:43:02 PM
goodness! "let silence reclaim what applause once claimed"
The Tyranny of an Empty Room (Poetry) - 6/25/2026 11:30:09 AM
This piece seems to depict a life now lived in the silence of a room can be friend or foe. You capture that strange threshold of later years—the way accomplishment turns to dust, regret darkens the corners, and memory becomes a slow, shaping force. Most interesting, retirement not as rest but existential vacuum, a thinning of air without much air left. The final lines offer a fragile hope. that beyond the emptiness of the room may be a shore waiting. Some strong thoughts on aging, solitude and the persistence of possibility that exists, especially in an empty room.
The Tyranny of an Empty Room (Poetry) - 6/25/2026 8:52:47 AM
I've had a motto since I was a kid: Accomplish one good thing a day. If you can accomplish more than one good thing, more power to you. But striving for one good thing encourages focus, and makes the day worthwhile. I've shared this philosophy with everyone I've ever been involved with over the years; in business, in music, and everything else that required intelligent, creative, and emotional unity from other human beings. Now.... in retirement, I adhere to that very same principal.
Speaking for myself: as we age, the days can seem at times like a blur, and one of the things that makes each one more meaningful (for me) is remembering the good thing(s) that were accomplished. Especially those that are accomplished for others. Waning verve and vitality is a real challenge. But loss of structure and purpose, reduced cognitive stimulation, and social isolation, can all be cumulative stressors too.
Thankfully retirement offers me a kind of freedom that I didn't have when I worked full-time. But it can also create mental plateaus if not managed properly. For certain.... ongoing creative output, and mental growth require discipline and intentional effort if one is going to continue bearing fruit. One good thing a day. That's what I say. Thank you once again for stimulating thought. Always appreciate your insights. Peace... rlc
Frozen Emotions (Poetry) - 6/23/2026 12:49:05 PM
Some remarkable lines here; "a chair worn into the outline of his waiting," The sorrow expressed feels like the arrival of weather that just happens because it comes our way and we must accept its arrival. Hardship and sorrow can be like that. The closing moment with the dog is beautifully expressed, the tail "moves like a slow metronome of mercy:" After all the storms and the long winter of live, this feels like a tender mercy indeed.
Frozen Emotions (Poetry) - 6/22/2026 4:54:58 PM
folded away
like a map no one needed,
This is a wonderful line. Has multiple meaning and is perfect in this poem. Our lives are cookie cutter , yet with different treasures. I liked what Richard said too.
Frozen Emotions (Poetry) - 6/22/2026 10:14:59 AM
Whether it's through a heartfelt conversation, honest dialogue, a moment of reflective stillness, or an unforeseen shift in perspective, an 'appreciated awakening' (as I've learned) seems to always come from a place of openness. A clear moment of realization that begins a process of reshaping the understanding of not who you used to be, but who you were meant to be. A mysterious invitation to look inward, and hopefully upward, where you can meet and see yourself, and understand the wisdom and truth that can be imparted when one stops struggling and starts listening. An excellent insight Kent, one that I totally relate to. Peace. rlc
Mirroring Me of You, You of Me (Poetry) - 6/21/2026 8:25:46 AM
an intimate and personal expose of the unique relation that can exist, in this case between father and son, appropriately posted on Father's Day. Beautifully imagined and executed. I posted a poem today that explored presence in absence. This poem explores presence face to face with presence, revealing how the self is clarified, challenged, and ultimately deepened through this encounter, the "you" and "me" as inseparable expressions of the same truth. Fine work.
Mirroring Me of You, You of Me (Poetry) - 6/21/2026 7:08:26 AM
"They walk apart to learn the shape of themselves." Indeed. A son(s) and fathers relationship can endure many storms and contrary seasons. It can also be a dynamic process of teaching, learning, giving, and receiving. Being a father can be one of life's greatest joys, but it also comes with its own unique set of challenges. The seasons of separation and misunderstanding can be whelming and heartbreaking, and seemingly at times without end. The resolve and insight you are experiencing Kent seems a blessing. Thank you for sharing something this personal. A touching insight that did nothing but good for me. Kudos! Happy Father's Day. rlc
Dying for Life (Poetry) - 6/20/2026 9:32:45 AM
This piece carries that unmistakable tension you write about so well—the sense of life pressing against its own limits and trying to break through those limits. There’s a brutal honesty in the way you frame the struggle, yet the poem still leans toward renewal rather than despair. It feels like a reminder that even in our lesser moments, something in us keeps reaching for light. A hopeful, reoccurring theme for readers.
The Simpler Era (Poetry) - 6/20/2026 9:29:47 AM
This piece has the weight of centuries, yet stays intimate in its concern for language itself. I love how you trace our national story through the evolution of how we speak and write—from inked letters to glowing screens—without losing sight of what’s at stake. The closing hope, that words can still grow back into forests, reads as a stunning image/insight that is both heart-felt and necessary. A beautiful reminder of what endures.
Dying for Life (Poetry) - 6/20/2026 8:47:24 AM
And so goes the endless cycle of being and nonbeing and being again. Enjoyed the richly-imaged thought-provoking read.
The Simpler Era (Poetry) - 6/19/2026 5:58:50 PM
When VP’s and the like are writing 1/2 page memos with AI, it’s sad. Adore this line , and men mistook their own hunger for discovery,
planting flags like commas in a language not theirs
The Simpler Era (Poetry) - 6/19/2026 2:22:40 PM
There is something disconcerting about seeing so many people, young and old fixed to their smart devices doing things both profound and minimal while not looking up and even recognize others with a kind, "Hello."
However, whenever I can, I give my books away to people both young and old. I rarely find anyone who tells me they don't read. And they seem eager to take a free book from me. It gives me encouragement that books and reading books is not dead. Just set aside for when people have what they consider private time to read.
Ron
invisible Magic (Poetry) - 6/18/2026 2:33:23 PM
Thank you for reminding us of this wonderful air that we breathe and that does so many things as wind, making a cool breeze become and unbearable cold blizzard or literally tear us apart in a tornado. Both magic and mayhem.
The magic of air is that we can breathe it at all. Because it is a mix of several gases, most notably, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. We cannot see them, taste them, or smell them, like our much needed oxygen. But they are there. In the wrong mix, very dangerous.
Ron
invisible Magic (Poetry) - 6/17/2026 12:24:04 PM
A fine meditation on the everyday miracle we forget we’re living inside. You turn air into both a force of nature and a kind of fugitive — an anvil, a phantom, a thief, a servant — all held in the same breath. The poem moves almost as wind itself, shifting from pressure to presence to the newborn’s first storm of life. A powerful reminder of the unseen architecture that holds us up and keeps us together.
invisible Magic (Poetry) - 6/16/2026 6:35:34 AM
Philosophically, the content of this piece is somewhat reminiscent to me of Anaxmenes of Miletus. Another of those pre-Socratic philosophers who attempted to explain the origin of the universe, as well as the first principle of the universe. Air.... certainly being one of the true shared human experiences. The trees and plants, the animals, man; everything shares the same air. The great altruist - air - who shares with all the life it supports. And then the aether... a personification of the air or the upper atmosphere breathed by the Olympians. Very colorful and engaging stuff. Brings back memories of the old days when I eagerly researched mythology. Interesting thoughts Kent. The kind of research that keeps the mind engaged. Enjoyed. Thanks, rlc
Integrity's Ledger at Dusk (Poetry) - 6/15/2026 7:04:04 AM
Perhaps it is. As I see it: real integrity isn't subject to trends or whims, it doesn't blow around like a dust-devil or change with the weather. It maintains individual clarity, a strong purpose, and a firm adherence to a personal code rooted in moral and artistic values. Real integrity is something that can help sustain us through the challenges we all face as we age. Some thoughtful soul-searching, with imagery that enhances your message well. For some, aging comes with wisdom, but for others aging just comes. An insightful piece Kent. Hope you're well. rlc
Oxymoronic Obsession (Poetry) - 6/13/2026 10:38:51 AM
A sharp and unsettling piece. You map the modern habit of living inside contradictions with a kind of clinical clarity, each oxymoron not just a phrase but a symptom. The image of language twisting into a Möbius strip is especially meaningful; it captures how easily meaning collapses into its opposite without anyone noticing. The final figure, the Loud Introvert, feels like the perfect emblem of our age, shouted into the void, vulnerability turned into performance. Welcome to the culture of self‑canceling truths.
Demagoguery Never Wins (Poetry) - 6/13/2026 7:33:22 AM
You take the reader thru the tension of the collision between historical violence and the quieter, interior forces that shape a life. I like how you let “fate” and “consciousness” stand not as opposites but as estranged partners, each pulling in its own direction yet bound to the same orbit. The imagery of armies withdrawing, planets passing out of conjunction, even the simple stride of a human walk, all echo the same truth: conflict exhausts itself, while awareness endures. The closing hope, that freedom might emerge without fists, feels both fragile but necessary. Some powerful thoughts on the limits of demagoguery and the deeper forces that outlast it. Well done.
Hunger is a Compass (Poetry) - 6/12/2026 10:15:29 AM
Your meditation on hunger as a guiding force feels both elemental and intimate. You turn a basic human need into a spiritual instrument, pointing us toward what is missing, what is desired, and what still calls us forward. Truth to tell, having done many times the Islamic fast which is very demanding, and which indeed induces real hunger, I grew of appreciate the feeling of hunger for a number of reasons, as well as the satisfaction that was experience with the breaking of the fast. Hunger is really the symbolic desire of wishing to be filled, a noble sentiment.
Ground Zero Gospel (Poetry) - 6/8/2026 9:15:51 AM
You reminded me of the vacant lots in Antigua, Guatemala. They were filled with rubble and had a little plaque that noted what earthquake had brought them down, never to be rebuilt.
Could it be that in the future, all that will be left of major cities will be rubble and a plaque that tells of what had once stood there.
Ron
Illusive Truth (Poetry) - 6/7/2026 10:23:03 AM
In my speech courses, I learned that there are always two ways of working extremely at any issue. And those who use auditory the best usually win in those political contests, often by the use of power and strong arm tactics , regardless of the facts.
You are very right in writing that the truth is a slippery thing that lying politicians live on. Unfortunately.
Ron
Illusive Truth (Poetry) - 6/7/2026 10:18:45 AM
A vivid portrayal of what can happen to truth when it is constantly manipulated to serve other (especially political) ends. It is only with the final image of the dolphin expressing its truth in a simple yet stunning manner, simply by being itself for all to see. An impressive and timely message.
Final Breath's What If? (Poetry) - 6/7/2026 10:00:33 AM
Many Greeks I have not studied referred to in this piece. Much prefer to the time of mortal death these days in these pages.
I like the updated version in the AI driven last words of Carl Sagan. Offered in Ed Phillips's article.
Ron
Final Breath's What If? (Poetry) - 6/7/2026 8:10:25 AM
A profound meditation, bold, imaginative, and unafraid to let the unknowable be what it truly is: luminous. The poem seems to refuse any true sense of certainty. Every "what if" opens a door that never seems to close. The final question: "What this the breath I was meant to become?" itself becomes a transformation that extends far beyond itself. Fine work here.
Today's Wildness Within (Poetry) - 6/7/2026 7:59:42 AM
This new inner life you write about feels both ancient and unfinished—those “platelets of age” shifting like tectonic plates beneath the course of our days. The section on donning other explorers’ costumes is especially interesting because it captures that quiet tragedy of performing identities that win no applause because they were never ours to begin with. No despair expressed here, only courage, toward the straight path where intuitive knowledge ripens into wisdom only by taking risks, a reminder of the importance of our daily acts of bravery.
Today's Wildness Within (Poetry) - 6/6/2026 11:27:34 AM
You have journey far in your life, and may have changed for the better recently under your new writer's guise. I haven't read Echosis where you may have revealed much of that journey…perhaps not.
I remain an open book. It's better that way.
Ron
Fascination Street (Poetry) - 6/4/2026 5:23:50 PM
It really is such a sad story for these homeless people, whatever the reason being for them to be there on the street. I see them sometimes trying to get on the bus I am on and being refused entry because of lack of fare. Some drivers let them on and they appear to grateful, just wanting to get somewhere and not having the means to do so. I feel sad whenever I see them.
Fascination Street (Poetry) - 6/4/2026 2:38:41 PM
An empathetic view of the plight of those on the street. Unfortunately, so many are there because of mental illness or drug addiction. It's hard for them to come back into reality of getting off the street by their own resources.
Every once in a while, City Hall decides to do something and clears them off the street they are on. Only to find that they find another street to congregate again. Their best chance for survival is togetherness.
We helped a young man get off the street and prosper. Unfortunately, he was picked up by the police and deported back to Venezuela.
Ron
Earning a Perdurable Peace (Poetry) - 6/3/2026 1:37:15 PM
Such a very good question. Fortunately, researchers have found, that in spite of what we think is growing violence in the world, is not true.
During the long course of history and even prehistory, the world was more violent. And generally getting less violent. Perhaps to expect war to end sometime in the future as obsolete.
What is interesting, is that countries build defense forces to protect themselves from other warring nations, only to use those forces for offense when political leaders come along and see that they can use them for their own, usually enrichment, purposes.
That's what's really sad. Most folks would rather not have any war going on. Only those that want to profit from it.
Ron
Earning a Perdurable Peace (Poetry) - 6/2/2026 12:42:38 PM
A powerful tracing of humanity’s long apprenticeship to conflict. Each era you evoke feels like another lesson unlearned, another chance deferred. The closing question feels like the sounding of a gavel—peace isn’t a mystery of strategy but a mystery of will. Your poem reminds us that the world changes only when the heart finally chooses to. This piece couldn't be more timely as well.
Your Heart's Bountiful Harvest (Poetry) - 6/1/2026 12:03:28 PM
I vegetated well while reading your potpourri of healthy foods for the heart. Mixing it with heartfelt emotions. Coming from the mistaken early thoughts that our center of emotions was our heart because it beat faster when we were in certain emotions and slowed down in others.
But we all know, and even I don't practice, heart healthy eating with my love for red meat at least for times a week is a way to avoid sickness and long. And all those veggies that that keep our arteries clean from corruption.
Very wistful and creative with a subtle lesson.
Ron
Moments Pass (Poetry) - 6/1/2026 11:50:55 AM
Yes, all the moments of our lives. Some very painful and some so delightful. For me, the fodder for my writing.
We are born in a fetal position, and your first stanza describes how we retreat to it…especially as we age. I'm finding that contractors of my arms and legs are a retreat to the fetal position, whether I like it or not.
And those moments in the waiting room. Remembering clearly what my neurosurgeon said: about a 50% chance that the surgery will cause some paralysis and about a 10% chance that it will cause my death. I happily accepted those risks, not knowing or expecting what happened.
But acceptance and letting go are the way to go. No use and crying over spilled milk when you can just get another bowl or glass.
Ron
Your Heart's Bountiful Harvest (Poetry) - 6/1/2026 7:18:55 AM
This poem adeptly explains what the title suggests: namely that the bountiful harvest that we are trying to cultivate can be found right there in our own hearts. From the textures of fruit and soil to the young girl stepping into her own future, bring with her all that she has tended and all that has tendered her. "Tomorrow's harvest waits . . . yourself always just ahead." A fine message for the drought of the times that we are living through.
Your Heart's Bountiful Harvest (Poetry) - 5/31/2026 8:50:09 PM
This is quite a metaphorical garden of plenty, Odin, filled with nourishment for the body and soul. And nourishment is never complete without a young maiden there to carry the seeds of fulfillment.
Moments Pass (Poetry) - 5/30/2026 9:18:40 AM
I really like your idea, so well stated here that "life exists as moments of waiting." I like it because it's a home truth that rings true. I too have written poems about waiting and trying to capture the essence of what it may or does mean. Here you've structured waiting as a room, yes, a waiting room, isn't that what it all feels like. As you suggest at the end: to make the moments we live a "the moment lived before it passes."
Seasonal Symphonic Voices (Poetry) - 5/29/2026 10:34:19 AM
A sweeping symphony dynamic, imaginative, indeed creative thoughts on the four seasons, each season as a world reinventing itself somehow for the reader. Some memorable lines in this one: not the least of which: the wind as a thought without the thinker. In summer, the forest fire a rehearsal that "no one attends!" Then poor, old Fall with its "undoing of things", spoken like a soldier that knows what the end looks like. Until the final movement: namely winter. Time as "a single unbroken chord" that the read can hear loud and clear. Winter the poem ending on a touching note with sound remembering itself even "before it is born." Love it.
Imagination's Stairway (Poetry) - 5/26/2026 6:01:23 PM
Alternate title: "Do not ask to know for whom the kettle boils: The kettle boils for thee..." Scary.
Imagination's Stairway (Poetry) - 5/25/2026 10:24:02 AM
That ending reads like the start of a horror movie!
There were no stairs leading to an attic in the three houses that we lived in growing up. But there were rooms, like my parents' and my sister's where we never ventured in, that I recall, and that was just fine.
In our second house, in the large pantry, there was a door that was in the floor that we pulled up and tied off, so we could go down stairs to the basement. The only thing in the basement that I recall was the coal bin(room) and a pair of Nordic cross country skis. The only mystery there was who brought them there and did they use them? Nothing scary.
Ron
Imagination's Stairway (Poetry) - 5/25/2026 8:47:25 AM
You’ve turned a simple staircase into one that leads into different worlds. Each image that you evoke — ribbed steps, listening trunks, objects leaning inward — feel like some kind of call, a summons even. The attic holds both the relics we inherit and the ones we fear to name. That final whisper feels like a most welcome invitation: "We've been waiting for you." because attics contain much more than the objects therein.
That Which Remains (Poetry) - 5/24/2026 9:30:00 AM
A beautiful poem, highlighting the little things that bring our memory to life rather than the big ponderous things that can drag us further down. The big, high-powered board room reduced to voices "skipping like flat stones across its surface, names of projects dissolving into fluorescent light." The ladybug that always returned, as if returning to the lost home it was always seeking. And what does it do but settle "into the leaves -- a quiet annex to my labor." A labor of love, I dare say. This poem lingers in the mind the way those “little things” linger in a life.
Solitude's Many Doors (Poetry) - 5/23/2026 12:42:41 PM
Solitude certainly is a place we all should go to do our finest work. Closing out all other distractions to focus on what is needed for a whole life and release of our creativity.
But those with voices in their head and the rapid agitation of ADHD, solitude is hard to come by.
Ron
Life's Rooms Nesting (Poetry) - 5/23/2026 11:48:59 AM
I really love your memory of rooms you have passed through, like we all do, in our lives. Especially the SAT room. In our high school we did not have the SAT, but another set of standardized tests that largely determined our status in life.
I recall my GRE room that was filled with large windows emitting below zero radiant cold into my thinking.
I believe that the glass walls of your final rooms are you're becoming self-actualized and open to almost everything you see or hear. Glorious room to live in, unencumbered by fear and loathing.
Ron
Solitude's Many Doors (Poetry) - 5/23/2026 10:23:22 AM
Solitude is usually described as a companionable friend as opposed to the hustler and enemy found in loneliness, but here in this poem, solitude is understood by the places that it inhabits, which is a refreshing change on the usual take on solitude. Solitude becomes a passing thru thresholds, as if entering different aspects of the self. At one point, the poet beautifully writes: "Here, healing does not shout its arrival. It kneels beside me like rain at midnight." Thus, this is less a version of what positivity solitude can offer when being alone and what solitude actually looks and feels like in the different circumstances (rooms or places) that we find ourselves in. Beautifully expressed, your point well taken.
Life's Rooms Nesting (Poetry) - 5/23/2026 6:38:39 AM
A life told, not from the vantage point of people or events or stories, but from the room in which a life takes place. beginning (of course) with life for a child "under the bed". We all remember that secret hiding place. Rooms we have all experienced down through a long lifetime, including the ambition found on office walls and the bedroom "with sheets folding like quiet vows." Such a unique image. An fascinating journey through the rooms of a life. Indeed, may our last room be a window.
Blue-Light Lure (Poetry) - 5/21/2026 7:08:05 AM
I could start quoting lines, but I would have to end up quoting every remarkable line on a topic so timely and necessary that readers need not only to pay attention, but to consider how these thoughts reflect in their own lives. We are all now the victims of this technological haze, this digital mirage that we daily walk into, screens shimmering like “baitfish flickering across our palms”. This seduction, from curiosity to captivity, from discernment to dullness of mind, is both poetic and painfully accurate. In describing our world, you end up making a diagnosis of the evils we are confronted with and suffering from. At poem's end, you offer “a compass buried in the chest” offering a way back to lie again upon the ground of the soul. May we all seek out this compass within to see what direction it is pointing towards.
Reliving Dream-Reality (Poetry) - 5/19/2026 5:22:23 PM
Some interesting images and imagery with an inventive turn of phrasing when speaking of nocturnal dreams: "They arrive feather-footed, yet thunder with omen, like distant storms already reflected in still lakes." Diurnal dreams during the daytime are another matter. "Mirages rising from coffee steam and passing glances." the mind seemingly always at work "write in the language of echoes." Turns of phrasing that make this poem compelling to read and consider.
Resonant Silence (Poetry) - 5/18/2026 8:14:22 AM
I don't know how you got that image of my room.
I particularly found the ending very poignant. I have always lived a simple life without clutter…until now. But like you, I'm trying to simplify it more so that I can relax and hear the birds sing.
Ron
Resonant Silence (Poetry) - 5/18/2026 7:41:48 AM
out of the noise of modern life the stillness that arrives at the end of the poem. You capture with precise modern-day imagery the way we move through a world overloaded with signals yet starving for meaning. I love how the poem shifts from the circuitry of the city to the circuitry of the self, and how silence becomes not an absence but a presence waiting to be recognized. I have written many poems about silence, but this one lends new meaning to the word, especially for the modern context that we live in. That final image—stillness wearing your name—can be nothing else but what it truly is, a kind of revelation of one's true identity, a reminder that what we seek outwardly often waits for us inwardly, patient and ever waiting.
Resonant Silence (Poetry) - 5/17/2026 10:28:57 AM
Hopefully when a seeker finds what they've been looking for, it ends up being a satisfying compensation for what they've had to put up with for so long. There is a deeply emotional and often painful process we go through in the search for what we think we truly desire. Strangely, on our journey, sometimes its hard to actually delineate what that really is. Hopefully when we think we've found it, it will offer us the kind of satisfaction we've always hoped it would. Good images Kent. And the thought-process is one I related to; having been through something similar myself. Hope you're well. Peace.
Caring Ideas (Poetry) - 5/17/2026 8:32:12 AM
My doctoral advisor, mentor and future employer, once told me, "An idea is a very fragile thing." Signifying that it could be crushed by just an unkind word.
Your words took me back to remembering when he said that. You have written that we are all talented. We all have ideas. We probably should take more time to listen to others' ideas before just dismissing them.
Ron
Caring Ideas (Poetry) - 5/16/2026 10:19:04 AM
Seems one of the most identifying traits of humanity anymore is its unfailing ability to be inhumane with each other. Quite frankly, if we are constantly judging others, and demeaning them, we have no time to love or support them. I'm thinking it's better to be the reason someone smiles, than the reason they get disgusted. Becoming another persons hell happens far too often. I believe that part of our purpose as human beings is to uplift and lovingly connect with others which, for all intents and purposes, ensures that what we create and share with others retains a human-centered impact that reflects kindness and empathy.
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That Socrates quote is right on. Good choice. Your contention: "For ideas, like emotions, require seasons of becoming. They deepen as people shape them, share them, survive through them," also resonates with me. There were various times over the years when creative ideas flooded through me like a fast-flowing river. I learned, after bumbling around like an idiot, and making many mistakes with premature application, to test my ideas before I acted on them. Quality and authenticity is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort and the ability to truly see yourself for who you really are. For me Kent.... this is one of your best insights. Well done. Moved me. Peace...
Truth's Oasis Imperiled (Poetry) - 5/15/2026 10:13:35 AM
"but to guard what still dares to hold true ." True? What actually is at stake, especially now-a-days when everyone seems to be in possession of their own truth. Who decides what is really true? Socrates, Descartes, Wilde, Kant, Heraclitus, etc. all brilliant thinkers that all have varying opinions, just like most of us. In some of your work, Kent, you hint at a kind of 'casual determinism', or the philosophical theory that all events are inevitable consequences of antecedent sufficient causes; often (but not always) understood as negating freewill.
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Freedom and determinism ultimately becomes a debate about the kind of moral universe we inhabit. Could it be that humanity is about to fully reap what it's sown over the centuries. I believe so. I believe also, as C.S. Lewis posited that: "Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. Could it be as simple as this.... 'a man sees what he wants to see, and disregards all the rest.' An interesting exploration Kent, which I'm certain everyone will have a different take on. Thank you for sharing. Peace...
Truth's Oasis Imperiled (Poetry) - 5/15/2026 9:49:50 AM
This poem reads like a parable of how truth endures even as the world tries to water it down into a tidal wave of lies that we see now on the shores of today's world, especially here in the US. The imagery of the oasis shrinking yet still pulsing with life is powerful — especially the way green insists on returning from cracked trunks. The poem captures both the erosion and the resilience of what remains true, and that final phrasing toward guarding rather than restoring truth is beautifully rendered.” We cannot restore truth, we can only recognize it for what it truly is ! ! Well done, Odin and timely.
Pulse on Borrowed Time (Poetry) - 5/14/2026 11:43:03 AM
Your prosetry shows how easily one can drift off into the anesthetic of a particular venue until their brains no longer accept reality, only the drone of the addiction they are on.
I like how you bring us back to the reality of reality over all of the avenues that one can go down into rabbit holes that have no exit.
Ron
Pulse on Borrowed Time (Poetry) - 5/13/2026 7:30:40 AM
Your poem captures with stark clarity how easily a life can drift into imitation, full of imagery t hat show just how empty life can be thru the new technologies. The imagery of borrowed experiences and outsourced feeling is powerful, and the closing line feels like a needed jolt. "Flatlining reality is not an answer. A strong reminder that reality only awakens when we ourselves choose to awaken and enter it.
A Dissonant Pandemic (Poetry) - 5/12/2026 12:01:03 PM
I believe you may be referring to Covid. That didn't kill as advertised, 3%. Just .5% in the United States, thanks to pandemic protocol and good healthcare to those who could afford it. Vaccines.
I like the way you end the poem with the seeming serenity of nature. But nature is always in turmoil… Mostly from weather and geological upheaval. The seemingly tranquil nature was carved out by many battle of one gene defeating another in the long progress of natural selection.
Ron
A Dissonant Pandemic (Poetry) - 5/12/2026 7:58:56 AM
"a balancing act where even silence feels like collapse."
That's the hinge on the door of this remarkable poem. Modern life has been so compromised when even silence no longer does its job. The images presented here all scream out for the silence that we so richly want and deserve. Well done.
A Merciful Sensorial Symphony (Poetry) - 5/11/2026 11:19:45 AM
A beautifully attuned piece in the form of words on a poetic page, quie, , and full of lived sensation. I like how you move forward, each image opens into the next, creating a gentle current of awareness that feels both intimate and expansive, letting the senses speak for the soul. A serene read that offers itself up like a cure for what ails us, something much needed in today's world.
A Merciful Sensorial Symphony (Poetry) - 5/10/2026 11:00:15 AM
Another of your phases of life observations. Ending abruptly with what we all face, eventually. With exception of people like David Attenborough, who seems to go on forever with purpose very high, indeed. Nothing less than saving the planet–what you and I hope for.
While I still don't understand all of your subtle metaphors and nuances, I find your writing to remain partly mystical, and partly predictive.
Keep sharing your liquid memories and muses…
Ron
A Merciful Sensorial Symphony (Poetry) - 5/10/2026 10:01:14 AM
Yes indeed, "time ripens unevenly" for most creatively driven people. And there is assuredly a kind of music that leads each of us towards what we are called to accomplish. As it's been proffered: 'the creative process, like a spiritual journey, is intuitive, non-linear, and experiential. It points us towards our essential nature, which is a reflection of the boundless creativity of the universe.' No worries about the lost review. Water under the bridge. Thankfully there is usually something unique and wonderful waiting just around the bend. Enjoyed this exploration, Kent. Framing your message like musical movement work's well. Thanks for sharing. Peace.
Grammar of Earth (Poetry) - 5/9/2026 5:34:47 PM
Odin, I found this one most interesting. I love how you let the milkweed stand on its own terms—stubborn, bright, uninvited, and fully alive. Your images of lichen, moss, and dandelions feel close to the bone, like a reminder that the overlooked things often carry the truest kind of beauty. An unusual, and unexpected take that hits home.
Grammar of Earth (Poetry) - 5/9/2026 12:05:39 PM
My grammars are buried in the Earth…just kidding.
I'm only familiar with the purple milkweed and bull thistles of my grandfather's pastures. The ubiquitous dandelion in our yards with its puff of floating white seeds that one blow would send into all the neighbors yards.
But we must remember that milkweed is the primary food an egg laying sight 4 the monarch butterfly.
Your prose subtly tells me that when we take away the crops that migrants thrive on, we destroy an ecosystem that has been beneficial for centuries?
Ron
What Matters (Poetry) - 5/9/2026 10:52:54 AM
I love the way you ended this. It seems while reading that we are all caught up in the routine of the hats we wear while leaving love waiting barefoot in the hallway.
Especially, the part about national pride and boundaries. Both travel and the Internet have made Marshall McLuhan's image of a global village possible…why are we resisting it?
I kind of feel sorry for those who leave one rat race for another with a bucket list…especially those seeking death at high altitude and littering the pristine beauty of Mount Everest in the process. Where is the love in that?
Ron
What Matters (Poetry) - 5/9/2026 10:23:57 AM
It's amazing how the ordinary motions of a day—coffee, laundry, meetings, headlines—can serve as into mirrors that reveal our deeper confusions. The poem moves with a quiet trajectory of honesty and insight, showing how easily we crown the trivial in our lives and overlook all those things that are essential. That final representation of a single, human choice feels earned and deeply true. A clear, steady reminder of what actually matters. Indeed, kindness can seem like the ultimate choice, once that we don't always make.
Grammar of Earth (Poetry) - 5/9/2026 8:06:46 AM
Love this, we have been trained to eradicate dandelions with glysophate to create these pristine yards ignoring that the whole plant is healing. The side of the road is a pharmacy. Beautiful writing.
Currency of Creation (Poetry) - 5/8/2026 9:05:11 AM
A meditation on the invisible, some invisible, elements that sustain the creative spirit. Certainly, we've got the world’s noisy, pride-filled spectacles — applause, success, fame—with the quiet, limitless wealth of imagination working in the margins. The imagery of ideas rising like dandelions through the cracks of routine is especially striking. The poem honors those anonymous creators: "The heart asking, the mind answering, and somewhere between them, a spark saying what if,,,." The true value of any form of creation lies in its resonance and not solely in its recognition.
Betrayals Hold Firm, Until... (Poetry) - 5/7/2026 12:39:58 PM
I found this one very personal for you, one who has experienced drastic breaks in your life that I only experienced once, when I was 20.
But you have weathered them well in the last few lines.
I'm finding that the chasm is growing wider as my age and others will have to change before it will change.
Ron
Betrayals Hold Firm, Until... (Poetry) - 5/7/2026 10:36:50 AM
A stark, compelling piece — you capture how betrayals accumulate like pressure cracks until everything finally gives way. I especially like the turn where collapse becomes clarity, revealing that it wasn’t the world withdrawing but us. A powerful insight into the value of letting go.
Learning Love's Natural Laws (Poetry) - 5/5/2026 11:23:16 AM
Such a powerful poem of how love can wobble when fear tries to hold it still. The early images—fists, fences, stalled windmills—capture the cost of possession with meaningful clarity. The turn toward release, where love becomes weather rather than ownership, gives the poem its deep grace. The closing lines, with two aging hands finally at peace, feel quietly redemptive.
Learning Love's Natural Laws (Poetry) - 5/5/2026 8:28:42 AM
From your prosetry I gathered that love is a many tumultuous thing. Only tamed in later life when the parties realize it's not just while passion, but steadfast sharing, that counts.
Fortunately, I've never viewed love that way. While my parents bickered over money, and my mother laid the law down in later life, they stayed together in an uneasy truce. If they held hands, I never saw it.
Ron
A Poet's Obstacle-laden Path (Poetry) - 5/3/2026 11:09:28 AM
Poets certainly are here to stay, even though those that wish to have a poem of the greeting card type can simply order AI to create one to print. And then send it off to whoever as some cheap imitation of real poetry when one has little time for such indulgence as writing poetry and sending it in snail mail or even an email.
I believe the reporters, both highly professional and ethical, as well as the public with their ubiquitous phones recording events when they happen, will keep reporting straighter, less biased and more accurate than it's ever been.
Ron
A Poet's Obstacle-laden Path (Poetry) - 5/3/2026 9:46:21 AM
"Wisdom starves locked behind attention spans." Love that especially.
"Cupping language like water in a city of thirst." And this line, how I feel it.
And yes: "bones of meaning in the refuse of the day." Halleluiah, onward march, brother!
A poem for us poor poets ! !
Taming Earth's Wildness (Poetry) - 5/3/2026 9:20:36 AM
Insight into how we tend to change things that have been sustaining for millions of years while species come in and species go out. Creating strength and resilience in those that remain.
We have terra formed much of the North American continent into the gentler landscape of Europe.
Thereby, changing its ability to feed its ecosystem. Now it feeds us, and the greedy. Until we are gone.
Ron
Foreheads Learning to Breathe (Poetry) - 5/3/2026 8:12:02 AM
Your prosetry emphasize the importance of sleep. The time when we can unscramble all of the tenseness derived from the efforts of the day to deal with not only the planned, but the unexpected.
As I read, the images flowed past my mind like one great huge surrealist masterpiece. Perhaps if you put AI to the task of creating an image of what you have written, it might be able to do it…in some future time.
Ron
Wisdom's Patience (Poetry) - 5/2/2026 1:27:05 PM
A graceful reflection, Odin. The poem captures how age turns haste into clarity, and how the later risks become acts of gratitude rather than fear. A quiet, steady wisdom runs through every verse and stanza. It reminds me of a verse from the Quran: "Patience is beautiful." Beautiful indeed when read thru this lens.
Taming Earth's Wildness (Poetry) - 5/2/2026 11:46:34 AM
A serene and beautifully structured piece. Each of your sections reveal another facet of tranquility—presence, compassion, awareness—until they gather into a quiet, lived wisdom. A gentle and restorative read for anyone who has a chance to read this marvellous poem.
Foreheads Learning to Breathe (Poetry) - 4/30/2026 10:39:13 AM
As I've come to learn: some of what we've gained in this life can be lost, but a dream can never be undreamed. Perhaps our greatest achievements cannot be experienced unless they are first dreamt. Perhaps dreams are the seedlings of the realities that begin to formulate in our waking hours. Perhaps to understand someone deeper, (and more fully) you need to look at what they aspire to, instead of what they've already accomplished. Enjoyed your thoughts. R
Furthering Sanity's Loss (Poetry) - 4/29/2026 9:10:00 AM
Omnivorous polar bears are adapting their hunting and dietary patterns. But species from the tropics to the arctics are vanishing at an alarming rate. These tend to be insects and other small creatures that go generally undetected but may be essential to the environment.
For the money makers and power brokers in the world, polar bears and other species are just commodities to be used and/or abused. Like over half of the human beings on the planet.
I hope that your prosetry will reach the worst, and the insanity will stop in time. Many think that we've already passed the point of no return and will be suffering for centuries as a result of greed today.
Ron
Furthering Sanity's Loss (Poetry) - 4/29/2026 3:24:15 AM
The facts are here to stay, all we need to do is recognize them. Global warming recently highlighted only yesterday in kind Charles' speech to Congress, spoken so nobly. Your poem raises and highlights a timely and important issue.
Roadside Stones (Poetry) - 4/26/2026 10:04:35 AM
The clicked images coming out of Gaza these days are of utter desolation, starvation and thirst. An apocalyptic landscape that you conveyed so well with these bitter words.
Why are we still capable of genocide? Especially from a state very experienced it and all of its horror.
But now it's happening in southern Lebanon and threatened in Iran. When will it ever stop? Only revenge is on the minds of those weed who survive.
Ron
Roadside Stones (Poetry) - 4/26/2026 7:33:49 AM
A reflection on the quiet of a life interrupted. The repeated click becomes a whole history of innocence, memory, and consequence compressed into a single moment. The imagery—dust remembering palms, a seed waiting for mercy, a brother’s frozen grin—makes the loss feel both intimate and universal wishing "if only the last move could be taken back.".
From Somewhere Came... (Poetry) - 4/25/2026 10:57:15 AM
I will have to see Her. While androids will mimic humans, by their very structure, they will never be, human. Their digital access to the cloud will make them seem like autistic savants. With abilities to serve us in unbelievable ways.
But I doubt if they will ever have creativity or whimsy created by our organic thinking engine, our brain. If that ever happens, all bets are off. We certainly will be yesterday's obsolete trash and thrown out to be recycled.
Ron (I need to write that story)
Humbleness Endangered (Poetry) - 4/25/2026 7:58:01 AM
This bountifully captures one of the most essential elements of humanity. I gravitate to these lines: “how many hands steadied the climb.
Still, there is a way to be tall
without standing on others.” and the line:
“Humbleness is a key, small and ordinary,
yet it opens rooms we live in.”
Beautifully written, Odin. ~~ djl
Scarcrow Beatific (Poetry) - 4/25/2026 7:45:54 AM
What made Andrew Wyeth unique (IMO) was that he was drawn to emotional truth (rather than reason) and also the subdued beauty of the ordinary. Or... as he put it, 'finding fresh meaning in something familiar'. My favorite of his (that I can recall) was "Stone Fence" Enjoyed your thoughts. A unique use of images. Peace.
A Mind's Captivity (Poetry) - 4/25/2026 7:22:43 AM
Rip Van Winkle wakes up in the Authors Den and this is her first read. Exactly where I’ve been, the long-term AWOL, is where you’ve captured, Odin, in this one of the many writings following ‘A Mind’s Captivity,’ and I sink into each and every single line. This could not, in my imagination, be more descriptive of our global human condition in this moment. The contrast of ‘what was’ (the pencil) and ‘what is’ (the noise, the screen, the loss of reality) is masterfully revealed by you. So many lines here to cherish that I won’t name a one. God Save The Queen, because the Kings are the wrong gender. I’m happy to see you write of the ‘pencil,’ because that elemental writing instrument is the return to sanity. Your writing shows you still have yours. It makes me want to find mine again. Thank you, Odin ~~ djl
Scarcrow Beatific (Poetry) - 4/24/2026 1:33:38 PM
Yes, everything gets a patina with age. You made me recall images I've seen taken of age men and women with their lives etched on their faces or their hands.
Often the neglected becomes new again when discovered. Thanks for the memory of watching an old piece of farm equipment left out in the field where it last worked.
Ron
A Nescient Epidemic (Poetry) - 4/24/2026 12:57:55 PM
It would seem that intelligence has left the elected officialdom in favor of the hard sell of the consumer of platitudes wrapped up in nice packages. But it all boils down to money.
Since most voters know very little of the candidates they are electing, they can be easily manipulated by carefully placed Madison Avenue ads. So easy for us to blame the politicians, when we don't run for office and vote for the ones with the most money and obvious presence all the way to where they are placed on the ballot.
Ron
Humbleness Endangered (Poetry) - 4/22/2026 10:14:21 AM
This piece reflects certain wise insights that some glean from living. "...there is a way to be tall without standing on others" Good line. Humility will teach you how to live calmer and wiser. It will also teach you how to live a good and meaningful life, and how to properly use what you've learned for the betterment of yourself and others. Bloated pride (IMO) makes people feel artificial, shallow, and one dimensional, where humility rejects that spirit and allows a feeling of realness to others. One of the attributes of a true humble spirit is remaining teachable, always, irrespective of how much you already know. Reflective thinking, Kent. Peace...
Humbleness Endangered (Poetry) - 4/21/2026 2:45:31 PM
A beautiful way to express the power of humbleness. You and I have both lived long enough to see it in real life.
Like how I remember the way that Herb Morrison, the guy who watched and reported the Hindenburg blowing up in his face, treated me as a newcomer to the community and how he kindly bought groceries for a 93-year-old recluse.
Ron
Ashen Principles Return (Poetry) - 4/21/2026 9:23:52 AM
Yes.... everything is cyclic on this planet. "While the Earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." Genesis 8:22. And also: "Go to the ant thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise." Proverbs 6:6.... It would seem that the ant works its way tentatively, and, observing where it fails, tries another place and succeeds. Would that humanity had the same kind of intelligence and moxie. Nevertheless, as Auguste Forel posited: 'The greatest enemy of ants are ants, just as the greatest enemies of men are other men.' It's coming to an end though. Humanity is about to enter into the worst seven years in the whole of human history. Thank you for your thoughts. Hope you're well. Peace.
Ashen Principles Return (Poetry) - 4/19/2026 10:10:53 AM
Astutely written. Every human civilization known as eventually crashed and burned or just faded away. That kind of rapid growth and greed is totally unsustainable.
But we humans have a tendency not to learn from our past and continue to build repeating civilizations, each one more complex than the past, but all headed towards the same self-destruction–our major flaw.
But the ants are programmed for devastation. They actually harvest the dead from a major fire that runs over their domains–their underground cities. They will probably continue to rebuild long after we are gone until the growing dying sun swallows our green planet for good in four or five billion years. We need to be gone before that happens.
Ron
Friendship (Poetry) - 4/18/2026 2:46:25 PM
An interesting phrase: "Yet some bonds do not disappear; they hibernate." In certain circumstances I wholeheartedly agree with you. In the last several years I've discovered irrefutable evidence that the man who raised me was not my biological father. Sadly, in circumstances such as mine, respect can never arrive unexpectedly. If this kind of friendship is happening for you now, you are certainly blessed. Enjoyed your thoughts. Thanks.
Friendship (Poetry) - 4/18/2026 2:22:24 PM
Although we were worlds apart, my father and I could always talk. But it was only in a few words most of the time. We just got along.
Your words brought me to mentors. During my early life, I had a series of mentors. Men who stood out in their particular field of endeavor and showed me, not by their talk, but by their behavior how I could grow from learning from them.
As I am reaching older age, my friends are getting older, too. Some dropping off altogether. I long to pass on some of my thoughts to the younger generations but get little chance. I guess that's why writing is so important to me. They may read me someday and understand.
Ron
