The Bend in The River #poetry #earthweal

River with sunset

Time telescopes at the bend in the river
thirty years ago
if a day
yesterday 
forever:
an up-the-river ramble and a sausage sizzle
cooking marshmallows by the fire
the coppiced trees aren’t taller
but I swear the island of stones has grown
alluvial deposits from the last Ice Age if you think of it
12,000 years to tumble down to here.
We say we grow old but we just spin and swirl in time’s current
buoyed along and eddying 
to be deposited on sleeping shores
while the river ripples whispering 
nevermore and yet
forevermore: 
a something and a nothing.

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I went for a walk yesterday by the river close to where I grew up, and I realised I probably hadn’t walked that particular path in 30 years. It’s such a strange feeling when time telescopes like that: almost like you’ve found a wormhole in the fabric of space-time. Because for that one moment, nothing has changed in all those years, and yet (almost) everything has.

Sharing with earthweal’s Open Link Weekend #103.

64 thoughts on “The Bend in The River #poetry #earthweal”

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  2. The ending lines along with your paragraph explaining your walk by the river brought back my own memories of moments in that “wormhole” as you so aptly described it! Love this! 💓

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  8. This is well written, both stylistically and thematically, charming Ingrid. Nostalgically wonderful. Of course reminiscing and comparing times past to times present is an ingenious and knowledgeable move. 🌺💖

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  9. Nostalgia! I loved this poem,yeah,it would feel strange,I guess, when you revisit a place you hadn’t visited in 30 years! :) I loved the opening line “Time telescopes at the bend in the river”.

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  11. Beautiful and thoughtful poem, Ingrid. You hooked me with the title and photo, and the opening line is perfect. Well, you know how I’m fascinated by rivers and time, so . . . 😀 It must have been both wonderful and strange to walk that path again.

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  13. I have enjoyed this poem very much, Ingrid! “we just spin and swirl in time’s current
    buoyed along and eddying
    to be deposited on sleeping shores “

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  17. So many beautiful lines, Ingrid!❤️ Reminds me of a time when I visited the city I grew up in after almost twenty years. So much had changed yet everything seemed the same. Love this. ❤️

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  18. I so relate to this. I feel the same way when I go back to my hometown, and stand outside the houses I lived in there………..I especially love “We say we grow old but we just spin and swirl in time’s current.”

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  21. Such a beautiful poem, Ingrid. I loved all the lines, and these resonated most, “while the river ripples whispering
    nevermore and yet
    forevermore:
    a something and a nothing.” The paradox of life so beautifully described. ☺️

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  23. Those are special moments when time overlaps and brings you backwards and forwards as if a collage of you and the ecosystem. You capture it well. I remember being fascinated by how deltas build up by stones and earth etc coming downstream. Maybe we accumulate in life just the same way.

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