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A Poet's Journal: January 31st, 2015

  January 31st, 2015 Sometimes we impose our will so heavily upon something we wish to happen, that we easily forget, and even prefer not to know, what we have set out for.  It is only by some stroke of luck that we find the original idea in the overcrowded world of our own inflated personality and turn to it again, as if it were the triumph of superior intelligence.  It is like walking up the side of a mountain only to arrive at the top and declare that a mountain was never there to be climbed, but that our climbing defined it.  Everything is glorious in hindsight and serves the ego to desire more and keep capturing, while in the mean time we are merely pushing at things that we have forgotten the meaning to.  This is not to say that our lives should be planned out before every step, but does insist that the planning is always renewed or recreated by something we have not yet perceived, and possibly will never perceive, and so leaves us to creating our own small endeavors for comfort
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Published Poem: The Hunter's Moon

  The Elevation Review has published a poem entitled The Hunter's Moon , which may be found on their website, or by clicking on the following link:  The Hunter's Moon by Douglas Thornton
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A Poet's Journal: January 26th, 2015

  January 26th, 2015 For more than a week now I have set my mind on hiking, but have found some reason or other to deter me.  The chance of rain, cold weather, transportation, even the tiniest detail as what to take, have turned this self-inflicted obligation in to an inexpressible joy, not because they allowed me to go, but because the circumstances seemed viable enough to prevent me.  It is often the idea of expectation that is so frightening, but those of the physical world are so much easier to confront; for it is the imagination of what we expect, and what we think it will be like, that is the most damaging to our state of mind.  All of our actions are simple and clear-cut, but it is only when we reflect on how to deal with them that they become confusing; our problem arises in believing there is a standard to be attained, that there is something that we must figure out how to use.  Of course it is hard to deny this standard, or any standard, because it is reproduced countless tim
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A Poet's Journal: January 15th, 2015

  January 15th, 2015 Sharpened my knives today; it is fulfilling to see them cut clean and though it is useless to continue working them, it always seems they could still be sharper.  There is nothing better than knowing a job has been done well and nothing more terrifying than believing you could have done more.  The place at which we find someone of great measure, who knows when things are done, and leaves them to be when there is nothing wrong with them, is no larger than the edge of a blade; and once this blade becomes dull the surface widens imperceptibly, but enough to leave us wavering in our judgement.  The problem is we have no stone on which to grind our thoughts and must merely live in the world, letting the events that pass by evoke a certain means to refine our vision.  We are not always right, our eye is not always penetrating, but the world is always so.  If we can get to the bottom of things without being burdened by the dullness of past action or future involvement, th
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A Poet's Journal: November 13th, 2014

  November 13th, 2014 The trees are different; it is gray and windy; that feeling everyone knows of autumn.  It seems as if it comes all at once, like an experience that we forget the details to, but never the feeling, nor the flash of color, nor the fading light.  That is why it is so easy to be lost among the trees today; they are shades of themselves, and part of an ideal gone astray. Douglas Thornton
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