A Poet's Journal: October 23rd, 2013

October 23rd, 2013

Reading is never so great as when it is inherent in the other senses of the body. What I mean is, there is often a music echoing around us, for the most part cumbersome and annoying, but never far from mixing with our tasks, so that what had started in a bitter dissonance of thought, now draws us into an unexpected world of confirmation. In the hours of reading this music begins to draw away, leaving the words to settle upon the dying rhythm, and finding entrance into the story, gives a clear and distinct voice to the path of imagination, only then opening the inevitable charms of the work before us.

Douglas Thornton

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A Poet's Journal: September 23rd, 2013

September 23th, 2013

A flock of geese passed on the 20th--only the second to date, the other being sandhill cranes. The 22nd marked the equinox and the moon rose with such grandeur that I was able to follow the contours of a crater with my binoculars until it was enveloped in the earth's shadow. It makes us wonder what things we would see if we could only look hard enough; or rather, if we could focus our mind on one thought with such illuminating perception, what would our view from the earth look like and where the paths of migration lead?
Douglas Thornton

A Poet's Journal: October 7th, 2013

October 7th, 2013

To peruse the pages of forgotten books is a pastime in which I shall always partake; and though it turns out that very few sentences are actually read, the mere fixture of the words, or the subject, create an affinity in the mind apt to deeper contemplation. Hardly can such a book be opened before we feel exist a mystic relationship with what is old, and even more so to the obscure, and far from leading us into a clear path of understanding, that same awkward and unsettling sentiment transfixes us and our thoughts drift back and forth upon the page until it is no longer the story to which we are attached, but the power of our imagination. It is only when we feel we need to know something that words become our greatest let down; they are but a means to the mysterious--for even among the driest of archaeological accounts there remains something so unilluminating, that were the greatest poet to take up their theme, he could not inspire a finer feeling than the descrip…

Newly Published Poetry: The Wintering-Ground (With Audio)

As winter is finally coming to a close, let us reflect upon the passing season and find a place where we are truly alive. Please click on the link below or scroll down to read this newly published poem:
The Wintering-Ground by Douglas Thornton

The Wintering-Ground

Within what hut,
My woodland maid,
May I remain awhile?
Next what fire may my chills
Be warmed? Be there
A path that leads
Past stony piles and tells
Us not to walk alone?

I do not think,
My woodland maid,
Deep sleep my dreams will find;
Nor will my coldness cede
To warm sunshine.
But if my steps
Should weary long, nor learn
My ways to scorn, that hut
Through lost defiles
I’ll find once more.
Douglas Thornton

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A Poet's Journal: October 11th, 2012 (With Audio)

October 11th, 2012

A large group of cranes pass over. There is something so bland in life that we become subverse to the very details that make it up; and yet, brought to our attention, those details are of no special concern, though they have created our interest in the first place. When we ask someone to stand out, we are not asking of anything genuine or long-standing, but merely a blind antagonist to draw us in to an ever greater competition of self-worth. But how foolish! For he who is willing to combat his fellow-man proves he is not on even terms with him and has not attained the superiority of triumph in his own mind. Instead of the ideas of excellence that another puts forth, should he find the terms for his own conviction. But if there is a sage of dire consequence, he has folded up his robe, for among the vast infinitude of prophecy there are but one or two decisions to be made. Perhaps we could still hear his echo if it were not that he too has become so bland.
Dougl…

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A Poet's Journal: April 29th, 2014