From a Poet

  February 20th, 2015 How much of our day is determined by the first few moments after we wake?  And how much have we already decided of ourselves when we are ready to step out from our place of rest?  There is some importance in asking this.  We like to believe that the place of rest holds some physical comfort that we can come back to in time, remaining unchanged, because we ourselves have spent the day going from one thing to another.  But there is always this underlying fixation that what is far from us is truly the thing that will bring us the most support.  The moment that I find myself confronted with something that I can't get around, whether it be plans, obligations, or simply self-imposed rules, I immediately think to something far away, something I don't have that I want, something that I could use, something that I could read; this is the reward for the effort. There is never really enough time for us to be a part of these things, we only use them to get something e

  February 19th, 2015 To the east, Jupiter is arriving earlier in the evening sky each day; today, a perfectly dull white dot in the fading blue expanse.  Looking at it, one feels as if he were falling into infinity. I have always read Thoreau in winter and spring; his words are filled with the melancholy of these months, and no matter how many times we come over the same passage, it remains steeped in a relationship that is filled with the turnings of human life.  Keats has been read as a complement alongside, though I find it difficult to veer from only one or two of his most mystical passages.  We have written so many words, but none of them has ever been enough to keep us silent; the hardest thing is perhaps letting them go, for the word always dies but our feeling for it always wants it to continue on the same plane, eternal, and for this reason confine ourselves to the most rudimentary meaning.  If we cannot look at anything as if it were a part of the ephemeral, as if it were fa

  February 16th, 2015 Dreams are enough to make us believe that our own personal view of the world is somehow the secret underlying meaning for which all things happen.  They are the confidence which renders meager doubt into absolute truth and hesitation into full-on action.  But none of us will admit that dreams are reality, that they are not illusion, nor that they are always positive, and yet time and again we are told to live by them, to follow them, and to play the role which we have fictionalized in our heads. Though it is separate in our understanding, the dreams of sleep and the emanations of our waking hours, are but one and the same.  There is even a certain pleasure in pondering if the exotic nature of our dreams holds a meaning to the current situation of our lives.  Such is the wonderment of recognizing the imaginative play of the real and the illusory, or the duality that seems to balance out life, because somewhere within the dream we believe there is a reality at which

  February 14th, 2015 What is with the recording of a journal if it is not to look back upon it one day and see our ignorance, and to a lesser extent, find out the times that we have been most genuine.  The truth is that it is difficult to like oneself in hindsight because we can see that we are merely running up against our own ego time and time again, wondering why things are this way and always asking what if.  Our whole sense of individuality is based on the thought that we are different, that we suffer more, are happier, more discerning, always the better or worse of everybody else; but if it comes to us as such, if we must convince ourselves that the materiality of our thoughts is the only way to end our troubles, then that means that we are lacking something either way, that we are ignorant of whom exactly we truly are and only look into ourselves to find an answer satisfying enough.  It is rare indeed to find someone completely hidden, whose own words do not lean upon him for s

  The Hunter's Moon  will cede its place to the new issue at The Elevation Review at the beginning of May, so here is your last chance to read before archival on this website.  Please click on the following link to read:  The Hunter's Moon by Douglas Thornton The Hunter’s Moon When all the sky is dark And there is just a cloud Of a height, illuminated By the far away sun, They gather what is the object Of the world, those who try To touch it. The cherished Are impressions of fullest night, When the gleam in our eyes Has not adjusted to the earth, As swift and nameless birds To hold our sight, make day Stand firm, while the spiritual Thought we sink down beside Moves on at its own abiding. Always kind in measure Behind the ferns, or up The hillside walking, has grief made The animal-spirit Known, but cannot call it by name, Long since, in the evening’s Low horizon, the dark Outlines of figures lie in wait. So bring the warm south wind To placid waters, and the streak Of summ