Nordic cloud

Aug 07, 2009 ⭐ View statistics (Premium feature)

Come hear the ant (new title pending)

Silence

like the omnipotence of God

fills the ears with space,

the mind embraces the stillness

and like the universe expands

never ending

void.

Yet it is a definite presence -

not human,

nor bird

nor beast,

just vast and convoluted

wide space

in which we float

as in the womb,

the water deafening our ears,

our hearing numbed,

our vision screened,

our existence only felt as air,

intangible

and wonderfully peaceful.

Any slight sound

like the rattle of a leaf,

or the ant striving up its hill

with its burden,

becomes exaggerated to a degree

and fills

the balloon of silence.

So different,

so individual,

so strange

this theatre of the world we live in,

each player with his own life

engaged in living it

in their own individual way

until they join the

silence

of no life

and become a part of it.

— Nordic cloud, Aug 07, 2009

About This Poem

About the Author

Region, Country: Oslo and Flatdal, Norway., NOR

Favorite Poets: Too daunting this.

Critiques

Kailashana

16 years 10 months ago

sitting with the silence i

sitting with the silence i heard nothing unusual and the usual was bundled in a memory i carried not ~A much enjoyed your poem... Ann... I find i most notice silence when i am silent within.. Hugs. "If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is wound up in mine, then let us work together." Aboriginal Activist Group, Queensland, 1970's

Ink Dragon

16 years 10 months ago

Ann,

wonderful! You have brought me tranquility with this write. Enjoy the silence, ~Nina

Diatom Shells

16 years 10 months ago

this sounds

This piece made me think of the feeling you feel when someone close to you passes away. A feeling where all sounds, emotions, feelings flatline and everything exists and move as one. It's a very strange feeling and strange silence. Maybe I'm off on the meaning but that's what I got out of it. I liked your poem the sounds were great. -diatom shells

bjp

16 years 10 months ago

Dear Margaret Ann,

It is always nice to see a poem of yours. This is a good poem and it displays a discipline in its consistency. As to titles, Olya is the title expert in our household, and that expertise comes from her years exhibiting art. That task involves getting the media and an audience interested in making the trip to some display space. Her rule is a) generally try to avoid using a word from the text of the material; b) pick a title that will inherently spark interest of the casual eye; and c) there is no absolute need for the title to fit with the work like some kind of carpenters join. In this case, your title is Silence, so that word need not again appear in the work, since the poem is so obviously on that topic. I have closely read Silence and made detailed comments in the square brackets below. Silence [redundant, given the title] like the omnipotence of ‘God’ [I understand the quotes but I'd still remove them} fills the ears with space, [excellent] the mind embraces the stillness and expands just like the universe itself, [pretty good] never reaching the limits- [again, pretty good] void. Yet it is a definite presence - [nice] not human, nor bird nor beast, just vast and convoluted [nice] wide space in which we float as in the womb, the water deafening our ears, our hearing numbed, [I like this] our vision screened, [ditto] our existence only felt as air, [very nice] intangible [good] and wonderfully peaceful. Any slight sound like the rattle of a leaf, or the ant striving up its hill with its burden, becomes exaggerated to a degree and fills the balloon of silence [very nice] with their sounds. [redundant] So different, so individual, so strange this theatre of the world we live in, each player with his own life engaged in living it in their own individual way until they join the silence of no life and become a part of it. [very nice knot and end] Brian

Geezer

16 years 10 months ago

Silence!

I liked it a lot O' Queen, but I think that seeing what Brian said, he is right. You did a fine job, and I like it very much, but it could use that tweak, Your's, Sir Gee.

Nordic cloud

16 years 10 months ago

Dear Brian

"Pregnant moment" "The shape of nothing" "Off the edge" "Deafening void" " After the sound" "After the noise" "No noise" "The sound of no noise" "Beautiful vacuum" " No mind, no thought, no..." "Catching the void" "Sound of the ant" "From sand to sand" "Life's abyss" "Sleeping consciousness" "Void" "Emptiness" Dear kind BRIAN, its always exceptionally nice to see your comments on my poems, treating me with such tact and always coming with good ideas, not to mention the fact that you have read them with insight and praised where you thought it good encouragingly, thank you Brian. Yes I agree about the title, I didn't spend, much time vetting this it just came as i sat and LISTENED, there was no sound, and I just sent it out in all its simplicity. The title now that's something else! I thought of something just before i went to sleep last night and can I remember what that was NO! You see some alternatives above? Love as aye Margaret Ann Thank you geezer too, yes I agree, Brian is so good at it insn't he? To Anna, Yes that is what it is and yet when the cars, the TV, the laughing and chatting and the music stops, that is the expansion of space that seems to fill the mind with its presence, pregnant presence, emptiness so wonderul, expectant and so intensely AWARE. As you are able to be I know. Ann of Norway

Ink Dragon

16 years 10 months ago

Dear Ann,

please allow me to say: dismiss "pregnant", the silence you describe is not "pregnant", but "full". Neither is it a "void" or an "emptiness". It is alluring, enchanting, tempting, enticing, beckoning, enthralling to the listener. I'd rather see any of these adjectives in the title, or possibly something along the lines of "meaningful silence". Just throwing out some thoughts on the pending title change, hoping to jog your memory. Don't you hate that, when something occurs to you when you are half asleep and you cannot find it again the next morning? (Has happened to me a thousand times.) Much love, ~Nina

Seren

16 years 10 months ago

You just decribed my nights

You just decribed my nights most of them anyway ... beautiful write dear Ann I loved it ... I love the silence I live for it lol in a house with four kids night is blessed .. love and hugz Jayne x x "We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves. Lynn Hall" ...

Kailashana

16 years 10 months ago

…for want of Silence, I

...for wont of Silence, I find my pen...and now nothing speaks, as if your words flow from mouth, mine, return to pen, silent with the Word. ~A "If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is wound up in mine, then let us work together." Aboriginal Activist Group, Queensland, 1970's

Nordic cloud

16 years 10 months ago

Oh woe is me

if I have silenced the angel of our thoughts my Anna Kailashana, whose diaphanous wordings enhance our souls and curl our brains through wanderings of the heart and mind so mystical and magic, that to silence you would indeed make this place shadowed in its wisdom, the dance stilled and the elements frozen. My Anna with the loving heart. Ann of Norway with love.

Kailashana

16 years 10 months ago

My Dearest Ann, There is no

My Dearest Ann, There is no truer silence than who I am when *unwrapping the eternal present* (thank you Jess/weirdelf...! ~A "If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is wound up in mine, then let us work together." Aboriginal Activist Group, Queensland, 1970's

anasta zia

16 years 10 months ago

Greetings Margaret Ann,

Brian read your poem to me. I said, "This needs a whole lot of editing." Brian said, "Why don't you?" He printed your poem for me. Then he said, "Why don't you let Margaret Ann see it?" And here I am. Mumble-Jumble Silence omnipotence of God fills ears with space, the mind embraces stillness the universe expands void. Not human, not bird not beast, just vast and convoluted wide space in which we float as in the womb, the water crashing our ears, vision screened, existence felt as air intangible, peaceful. Sound of an ant striving with its burden, becomes exaggerated and fills the balloon. Silence. So Delphic the world we live in - players engaged in living individual lives till they join. Silence. For some reason, I cannot get the stanza breaks to show up. Adios, Olya

greeneyes

16 years 10 months ago

beautiful

wow this was wonderful. You are a stunning writer. Your words flow so well, they are almost liquid.

greeneyes

16 years 10 months ago

beautiful

wow this was wonderful. You are a stunning writer. Your words flow so well, they are almost liquid.

themoonman

16 years 10 months ago

Ann...

I too love the silence and listen for what you never hear, my hearing isn't what it once was so I'm sure to miss a lot, and silence may come easier for me at times... but I like to cut the sound off the t.v. and listen for it, wrap in it, till all I can hear is sounds of sleeping dogs and children, and of course from the back room... she snores... lol. I thought you going with something about the ant was good for the title... To hear the Ant... I am not going to offer anything else, Brian and Olya have been here and they covered the poem with polished pristine, so glad to have the two of them here among us. and you Ann of Norway are always a pleasured read for me! Richard

Bonitaj

16 years 9 months ago

Anne

I can hear you from so far away - A beautiful, capturing poem demonstrating the silence without and the stillness within! Well done Boni

orgami

16 years 9 months ago

im rattled a tad tonight but love your poem

I already know you well Ann and we are artists so your poems are like art works Im trying to paint a satellited dish with something just this conc ave bowl now black waiting for inspiration would be good for a portrait I took off the receiving part and like hte round sheild part Lori doesnt understand this and says I just carted home junk and had to turn aside an oval shaped one tonight for free so much free junk lately its great pregnant I always think of what comes from beyond this Twins? male boy female girl its like saying sky yes but beyond that universe and infinite Silence is so great ill have to tell you about walking one summer on a highway under the most magnificent starry night ever no traffic for hours or half an hour at times and it is a major highway but I guess not that major anyway this poem is chock full of action and words and I like it very much

Nordic cloud

16 years 9 months ago

Dear Orgami,I am glad you

Dear Orgami, I am glad you liked the silence I sent you, the main road silent is a stunning intensified silence when one expects a roar, the roar is in the subconscious as one HEARS the silence, a parabolic silence like that from the pregnant universe even though it must be so noisy out there if we could hear it, the light years away gives its 'silence' a wondrous wisdom that we attribute to it even though we know its a load of twaddle. How I love your idea of a 'parabole antenne' as a painting base ooooh the things that spin in the mind as one looks at the great circle of concave expectant magnetism. I await the conception of your idea for it. On my wall here is a washed up lid from some ship that I found on the beach (among so many other things!!!!!) on the S.coast here, it has once been painted red, now a beautiful worn grey showing the waving shapes of the graining and it has a 'kind of' handle at the 'top' this gives me pleasure every day I look at it. I would not paint it as the patina is 'fulkommen'! The antenna is more asking for something to relieve its monotony of surface, I look(visually) forward to seeing what you make of it in the end, please? I also am agog for the story of your walk, oh when the stars are brighter than the light on the earth, which, when we didn't have 'street' lighting(1970's) here in Flatdal, shone from deep in the wood where I stood (slightly enebriated with home 'hjembrent', looking up and disbelieving what I saw, so intense, so brilliant, so silver, and we now with the lights of earth in the dark have watered them down to mere impotent pricks! I felt like flying into the hammock of the Milky Way at once, holding my hands in front of me in case I struck fur and found I had frightened a fellow moose!! I could see nothing only the memory was used by my brain communicating with my feet to tell the way up the very steep path of stones and needles, mud and mushrooms, mosses and roe deer; luckily i had been up and down it for so long that I could have done it blindfold-as I now did. In silence everything can be heard growing mentally as well as physically, and if broken with a sound can be so intensely felt that it echoes through the mind like an elixir, or a frightening dread, conjuring up so many connotations. Love ann of norway

orgami

16 years 9 months ago

Oh dear Ann how magnificent you "See" the majesty

"the Hammock of the sky" Lord Nelson slept in his hammock in his captians berth and his lady sewed blue birds and sweet things on fabric for him so he could have her finery with him whilst on his voyages and orders When he was mortally wounded by a fine sniper shot in the close rigging during a battle they put his body in the rum but in celebrating the victory home they drank all the Rum Flavoured with Nelson of course but he wouldnt have minded (am I right was it he the one eyed captian) Im so tired but awake full of many coffees and a good day of work There was no streetlights on this stretch and the higway was elevated and the surrounding country was rock rounded by the glaciers and small pines Nothing major or large so one could see the sky all about on the flat straight stretchs of which were many After one thirty in the morning there were no cars and it was warm so I took my shoes off and socks and walked on the painted yellow line it was so soft The milky way spilled angular across the sky in such brilliance IT would be a perfect spot for an obsersvatory up there NOrth of Parry Sound about thirty miles or more and just off Georgian Bay I slept on some moss on a rockycut and woke up to morning big rigs rushing past and caught a ride soon as the sun came up to my destination Of course Im good at stories so the ride and rider were greatly enchanted again though I love your love of the ordinary and interesting as do I We are kindred spirits I can tell Love your Native collector of the odd Steven