The Other Side

Human Condition, poetry 1 Minute
the force of the tide photo westcoastwoman 2021

“Summer was like your house: you knew
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

THE OTHER SIDE

This morning
forcing myself
to rise from
the Other Side of
the bed
the world
a sky where
rain fell
no bombs
not rising to
cram essentials
into small bags
before entering a corridor
of human strength and
misery

This morning on
the Other Side of
the world
the bed
first foot
met the floor with
“Thank”
the second
“You”
humanity rising
no Other Side to
Courage
Truth
Freedom

We rise
unstoppable tide
forcing
everything
everyone
Forward.

wcw 2022


Published by westcoastwoman

A story or poem follows me around for a while, I write it down to get it out of my head and sometimes after rereading it seems universal enough that I hope it might also speak to someone else. One thing that has become clear is the photography and the writing seem to be morphing into one, the photograph being the muse for the words or the words for the photograph.....and then a quote I find from someone who had the talent to put what I am trying to say into a few precise sentences.

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8 thoughts on “The Other Side”

  3. I have this paranoid imagining now that I’m playing around in the surf and suddenly get taken out by a massive log. What an ignominious (takes me about three attempts before I right click on it to get the spelling right) way to die.

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    2. I have stood by the shore during wind storms and watched huge logs being tossed like sticks from the ocean onto the sand, and logs that have been dug in for years easily removed by the power of the waves and taken back out to sea. Feels a bit like life right now on the planet….Expected, unexpected…….the perfect storm…..chaos. Yes, Rilke.

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