All Comments on '[the water...]'

the water of a God-like river

leaving you thoughtful and a little bit

sad

Interesting these lines coming from you

'is over

leaving you thoughtful and a little bit

sad'

I am in two minds about this section but otherwise brilliant. It's getting a recommend.

The Nile is the longest river in the world at about 4 200 miles. But somehow it fits that your river is God-like, ten thousand miles long and simultaneously still and rapid. Intereresting contrast to the dialled back human reaction.

delightful and rueful in equal measure.Ty

complexity. I enjoyed.

I didn't hear a noise as I read this, nor for a few moments after. Took me somewhere else.

I read this last night a few times and decided I needed to think about it before voting or commenting. I thought about the same thing Liar did; there are no 10,000 mile long rivers, at least in this solar system, and nowhere else, so far as we know. Not of water. But then rivers don't have to be of water. And with that realization I vote five and say I understand.

It's slightly more prosey that your earlier stuff but like always simplicity and economy is what makes your poetry good to me. I especially like the last line: one small word that frames the whole poem.

I was pooped last night for a marathon bout of essay writing. Those lines I was a problem with before, I get now. I don't know what I was thinking...

I wrote a number of poems last night.

They were about a number things.

Time. Life. The impossibly long. The impossibly short.

I threw them all away.

I knew I would.

Yours is better.

Thank you for each word which was kind.

A poem should have a value even without any interpretation, without decoding the metaphors or looking for its background. Perhaps this poem did, I hope. You may still welcome a few notes.

To the Chinese, centuries ago, tall mountains and great rivers were Gods. Their world had about ten thousand of their Chinese miles in diameter (their miles were shorter than ours today). Thus "ten thousand miles" was a poetic equivalent of "infinity". The former is material thus poetic (and dramatic--their children were sent to wars thousands of miles away), while the latter--infinity--is abstract.

So much for the historical background. I'll leave the metaphor for you, while it's always nice to have the direct option too: that a river is a river, and a journey is a journey.

The entire poem but for the last two lines appears to be an extended metaphor for a life that has ended.

It is only a little sad that this life has ended because there is a completion to a life that has gone full circle: ending is a success.

the globe or the stars, mindblowing. TK U MLJ LV NV