paulinskill hours and other poems Quotes

“To forget would mean the things we never knew
had never waited to be known, never waited
to be forgotten, had never been; waiting
beneath the long dead stars
in time. . .”
― John Daniel Thieme, paulinskill hours and other poems

“. . . This
is not the same river at my fingertips.
There are no paths, no sunken roads
familiar in the forest, by which we can
retrace our steps,
by which we can escape
by which we can reclaim and return,
or hear the child’s song running in the timothy . . .”
― John Daniel Thieme, paulinskill hours and other poems

“. . .our whispered words, faintly in the darkness, dissolving
within the trees—then, fleeting words of consolation
would not suffice if feigned, and flippant words
confessed reluctance—our words
were meaningless uttered on the wind. . .”
― John Daniel Thieme, paulinskill hours and other poems

“we lived depravity
and called it truth, silencing
our dreaming, and
our love, discarding
things holy.”
― John Daniel Thieme, paulinskill hours and other poems

“I wish to go down under the waters—
the cool, crystalline waters that I knew, where all
that is, here, existing, is
is only to be lost within the susurrations
and the rumours of water and the evening star
we wait for...”
― John Daniel Thieme, paulinskill hours and other poems

“. . .the sorrows of the heart yearn
to be erased, for one final atonement
finite and forgetting and whole—but time in its preserving
will not permit forgetting; destroying
only when we can no longer beg
or argue with time
to preserve the brief benisons
a few moments longer than our sins”
― John Daniel Thieme, paulinskill hours and other poems

“. . .though the names of lovers are forgotten in time, their names
written across the sky as ogham threads are traced
between the stars”
― John Daniel Thieme, paulinskill hours and other poems