Gerhard Oevermann 🐦‍⬛

To the Moon, in Absence #poetry

the siren drags time by the collar down the block and it won’t come back #haiku

variation on a haiku triptych that I wrote earlier in the year. rain on car roof ticks small questions with no answers only their insistence the mind builds a throne from yesterday’s splinters then guards the kingdom headlights pass, then pass and i am briefly nobody in the dark between #haiku

moon under cloud spectral milk through the pines owls stir the vowels #haiku

night city under the overpass rain drums on steel a man cups a cigarette like a small illegal dawn sirens climb the ribs of the street and vanish into blue exhaust #poetry

stay here a while the dark under everything reaches us differently tonight ab intra you said #poetry

mangy fox sleeping by a shrine still a buddha #haiku

wolf spider on the porch carries the future on her back #haiku

the sun reaches the tops of the pines gold gathering in the highest branches below them the darkness remains full of birds #poetry

sunrise a thousand possible days enter one window #haiku

no god came up from the hollow only fog caught in the black trees and the creek working under stone as if the dead still had somewhere to go #poetry

nearly morning the woods are still dark when the first bird begins I cannot see it only the branches slowly separating from the sky and the small interval in which I know something is there before I know what it is perhaps this is how the world began for me a sound before the light #poetry

I watched the acorn fall its brown shell turning through the autumn light and somewhere between leaf and earth a hundred summers opened green shade deepening I picked it up still warm from the day and held it in my palm the tree I would not see already rising through my absence #poetry

insomnia I was nearly asleep now comes a remark spoken fifteen years ago of no importance to anyone my mind has brought witnesses no one may leave I request a recess apparently we are just beginning #poetry #acrostic

elsewhere everyone is speaking a little louder to be heard I nod at what may have been a question someone leans closer bringing the whole room with them through the open door a narrow strip of sunlit grass my mind has gone there the rest of me is still being polite #poetry #ADHD 

#poetry #nature #neurodivergence

among the pines I hear the wind long before it reaches me far above the crowns have begun swaying the trees leaning now without leaving where they stand how easy it is to mistake stillness for the absence of surrender then the sound comes down and passes through me #poetry

deep in the woods a bird I cannot name does not require one #haiku

high in the clouds geese call down a road I cannot see #haiku

between birdcalls the woods become much larger #haiku

river fog a heron walks out of nowhere slowly #haiku

one acorn falling through ten thousand years of oak into this moment #haiku

one yellow leaf turning in the current still becoming #haiku

nothing follows the heron from the water not even the heron #haiku

#Pumpkin please stop unearthing me my absence is permanent kindly take the hint I am not an extrovert #poetry

I close my eyes to hear the birds and begin placing them one beyond the fence one high in the oak another farther off until the dark has distances I could walk through a dry sound beside my foot I open my eyes a wren pulls at something beneath a leaf its whole body leans and I lean with it #poetry

i look and the world darkens into beauty eyes watching from the woods a stray song snagged in the wind the moon pared to a white edge my heart does not explain itself it only points and what it points to stays half-wild #poetry

stay I say though stay is not what I mean do not remain who you are do not become smaller so I can keep you go where your life keeps going change change again only let me stand near enough to meet each person you become #poetry

a silver inch of river slips down the heron’s throat #haiku

peace monument the bronze sword freshly polished #haiku

closed border olive roots cross in darkness #haiku

harvest moon forest the white stag listens beneath the roots #haiku

beneath the monument a mole rearranges the victory #haiku