Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature. Over 18,800 daily subscribers. Over 7,000 archived posts.
Michael Simms: Coming to Terms
I remember standing at the window watching the snow fall slowly through the afternoon. It was one of those April snows we used to get in Pittsburgh before America went to hell. I’d just returned from spilling my parents’ ashes in the Llano River behind their house, probably an act of thanagogic vandalism of a municipal water supply but who’s to know? And watching the snowflakes melt as fast as they hit the sidewalk I felt a bit ghostalgic, a word I may have invented for that occasion, to mark a feeling of nostalgia for another world, the one we came from and will return to, and also the feeling of affection for the dead, at least for my mother, a kind and wise woman who subtly saved me from my father, a cruel vain man whom I’ve come to accept genuinely despised me. But I didn’t hate or dislike him instead I disloved him, feeling an intense disappointment at his limitations, opportunities for love being so few in this life. And as each snowflake fell on the sidewalk immediately disappearing as if meant to live only in the air, of the air, I was feeling astralgic, a sadness for the stars that died billions of years ago whose light we see now, a homesickness for a cosmos that no longer exists. There is no lasting happiness in this world, only particles of happiness, fleeting, unpredictable, transitory as a fragrance or a falling leaf or a glance from a passerby on the street, a plain person, hardly noticeable who slips through our dreams like a cat through shadows changing us in ways we never wanted to be changed.
Michael Simms is the founder and editor of Vox Populi. His latest collection of poems is American Ash (Ragged Sky, 2020).
Copyright 2021 Michael Simms
Vox Populi 
This is so beautiful Michael. Thank you for this.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Allison!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I absolutely love the last two stanzas of this poem and will hang them up beside my desk. Hauntingly meaningful so a special thank you.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Mandy!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Profound poem, Michael.
I really commend you for this dialogue you have within yourself. Such issues are always, well, agonizing.
I have been thinking all day about this poem since, of course, I knew your father. For all that, it is always easier, in large part because it is vastly less complicated to be a friend than a son.
And the poem brings to the fore all my own complicated feelings about my father, a man I both love and hate.
I think these relationships live on throughout our lives, going from one age to the next, growing from one interpretation to the next, searching for some resolution we know we will never find.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, John. My parents liked you and enjoyed your company. Once the guests were gone, though, a different dynamic took over.
LikeLiked by 1 person
thanks for this. haunting. ghostalgic now in my vocabulary.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, Daniel!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Certainly resonates with me; I find myself more and more the last few years speaking of, searching for, moments, a tinge, an instant of what I call Bliss. Lovely poem. I don’t think I have told you that I really enjoyed (if that’s the proper term) your new book. It still lies close at hand; haven’t stuck it in the bookcase yet!
Leo
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Leo! I appreciate your steadfast attention to my work as a poet, writer and editor. There are plenty of good writers around, but a good reader — now there’s a rare gem!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Loved this. I have a nostalgia for the scenes in Bradbury even though I have never lived them.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Barbara. Yes, no one creates a mood as well as Bradbury!
LikeLiked by 1 person
You put into words what I so often thought:
There is no lasting happiness
in this world, only
particles of happiness,
fleeting, unpredictable,
transitory as a fragrance
or a falling leaf or a glance
from a passerby on the street,
a plain person, hardly noticeable
who slips through our dreams
like a cat through shadows
changing us in ways
we never wanted to be changed.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Rose Mary. My dear friend from far away…
LikeLike
Beautiful.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, Judith! Love your work as well.
LikeLike
The “dislove” part really resonates with me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, it is a word that is needed, I think. There’s a complicated emotional terrain between love and hate for which we have few words.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Having just moved this week (still unpacking, Verizon tech come and gone), this is the very first poem I have read in my new home. Both your words and the timing make it very special. Thank you!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, Jackie! Happy housewarming!
LikeLiked by 1 person
That cat, itself a pitch-dark shadow, crossed the street near our home a day ago with a no-longer-destined-for-this-world mouse dangling from its mouth. I have pondered that moment more than once. And now your “Coming to Terms” captures it for cat and mouse, star and snowflake, as for us all, with your phrase “to live only in the air, of the air.” You took my breath away just long enough for me not to take for granted the breath I breathe in now and next. Thank you, Michael! I am already breathing more deeply.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you so much, Charles.
LikeLike
Wow!
Sent from my iPhone
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, Nancy!
LikeLike
A beautiful poem/meditation, Michael. Many thanks.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, Dan!
LikeLike
Wonderful, Michael.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, David!
LikeLike