The Journey

by DevanEWilliams

Published September 2, 2011

In Poems

As the sun dives into the west, crimson and ablaze,
I make my way down a broken road-
A frayed and torn ribbon flies beneath my feet;
The flaming orange sky gets no closer as miles pass.

Something teases at the back of my mind-
A thought I make effort to ignore.
The sound of it, only half-formed
Disrupts the rhythm of my footsteps.

The atmosphere fades to a calming violet;
Yet, the road stretches on
To an impossibly flat horizon-
Earth and air clashing in a faraway place.

The thought returns with doubled ferocity,
A lion snapping its jaws, threatening.
It roars and snarls and...reveals a question,
Just a simple question.

"What are you searching for?"

It is no lion-it is a frightened kitten
Who trembles, fearful of the unknown
And a possibility
Of a journey without purpose.

I begin to respond hastily-
For of course I have an answer!
But my mouth freezes open momentarily
When I cannot find the words to speak.

"I am on a quest," I finally say
With eyes of shimmering glass, seeing nothing
Of the passing landscape,
Mind and imagination replacing vision.

The feline flicks its tail, dissatisfied.
"But what are you searching for?"

It is at this point in time
When the steady tap-tap of my feet
Slows, then stops-
I am motionless on the crumbling path.

I blink, suddenly realizing
There had never truly been
A purpose for my journey; those horrible
Long hours walking, wasted on a forgotten dream.

Lowering my head, I turn,
Preparing to return all those miles back
When I notice the home I left years ago
Standing just steps behind me.

"You have found what you search for."
The cat licks its paw and stretches.

I take the first step in what feels like centuries.
The road is no longer dismantled;
It is whole again, the ribbon healed.
The sun has been replaced by a luminous silver moon.

As I grasp the door knob and turn,
The cat vanishes.
The image that is left behind in the fading mist
Is a silhouette of a lion.

Comments & reviews · 5
User avatar
Demoness
Review
Demoness wrote a review Review · Sep 25, 2011

Devan! You're an amazing poet!

I was impressed with you last poem, blind, but now I read this one and was even more stunned!

This poem tells such a great story and the way it's written, with vivid descriptions and imagery just made it even better! I could really picture the whole seen infront of my eyes and it made the poem feel very real and alive so that's good!

I think you structured the poem real good with four-lined stanzas that were easy to read and where the words just flowed on easily.

I've got a feeeew nitpicks though. Mostly punctuation.

"Yet, the road stretches on
To an impossibly flat horizon-" I would put the "-" at the end of the line above and instead put period here.

"For of course I have an answer!" - Away with the exclamination mark, it's just annoying.

"It is no lion-it is a frightened kitten" I'd replace the "-" with a simple comma.

Other than those three little things this was awesomatic!

Oh, and I loooved this last stanza, espacially the last line, it tied the piece together perfectly!

"As I grasp the door knob and turn,
The cat vanishes.
The image that is left behind in the fading mist
Is a silhouette of a lion." - AMAZING!

Finally; Here are your spiders, you'll be the third today to be awarded with 4/5 icky, sticky spiders! Congratulations! xD

Good Luck & Keep Writing

// Demoness

User avatar
Cailey
Review
Cailey wrote a review Review · Sep 25, 2011

Amazing! this was a good poem, and story and well, I just really liked it. :) So, now for a few words of advice and nitpicks and such. there were a few lines that felt off to me, they didn't quite fit the overall flow of your piece. Here they are:
"The flaming orange sky gets no closer as miles pass."
"To an impossibly flat horizon-"
"It is no lion-it is a frightened kitten"
"But my mouth freezes open momentarily"
In the last one I just didn't really like the sound of hastily, momentarily. It felt too repetitive to me, since none of the other lines rhyme.
I loved the last line, it was amazing and definitely tied the whole poem together. So, I know this probably isn't the best review, but I hope I've helped. :) Keep writing, you are a great writer. Now, I'm off to some more reviews. :D

wingsofaphoenix wrote a review Review · Sep 2, 2011

I really like the images that you painted here. I was able to see very clearly what was happening and was really drawn in by the poem which is fantastic. I also like how you mixed thoughts into the writing to help the reader connect more. What I found was that the poem had quite a few words like 'in, a, it, then' that cluttered and crowded the more juicy words and slowed the pace a bit. If you tried maybe taking just a few of these out, replacing with a slightly rearranged line or something, then the poem would be more captivating than it already is. Also, I realised that you used quite a few tired words, such as crumbling, glowing etc. If you found synonyms for these then perhaps the poem would shine just that bit more- for example, "The sun is gone, replaced by a glowing silver moon" could turn into "The sun replaced by a luminous silver moon". You don't even have to mention that the sun is gone, only that it has been replaced. Don't mind me if you don't want to do that because I don't want to take your voice out of the poem at all, that would be horrible! I really enjoyed this poem and I'm looking forward to more of yours in the future. The message was stunning. Thank you!

User avatar
dolwright
Review
dolwright wrote a review Review · Sep 2, 2011

Great Imagery there. A little capitalization error there but nothing to disrupt the flow of the poem.
It felt like the perfect poem for a book I read, 'The pilgrimage', where this two couples had to go on a journey of which their destination and route will be unfolded to them as they went. I don't know, but you could loose the double hyphens you keep putting at the end of some of the lines in the verse. Good poem and keep writing.

User avatar
Matthews
Comment
Matthews commented Comment · Sep 2, 2011

Wow. This is beautiful!!! It's very well-written, easy to read, and grabs the reader's attention with the wonderful wording. It's very true - the message, and applies to a lot of people, I think. Good, good job. Fabulous imagery, fantastic!



The idea that a poem was a made thing stayed with me, and I decided then that I wanted to be an artist, not just a diarist. So I put myself through a kind of apprenticeship in writing poetry, and I understood even then that my practice as a poet was deeply related to my reading.
— Edward Hirsch