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Jul 05, 2026
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looking forward
"Looking Forward"
In the upper case,
a volume the colour of
late‑harvest light,
its spine breathing
salt and iron.
I keep it ajar
—not for dust,
but so mapped-out water
can run beside
my own small channel,
each bend marked
in a hand I almost know.
Through the plaster,
a swell of brass‑warm air
—someone's breath
caught in a long note,
turning the parlour
to water.
I do not rise,
only let the sound
find its own shelf
between maps,
where it can lean
against a memory
I have yet to
admit is mine.
Between first assent
and last,
a pressed leaf charts
streets I will've walked;
in hollow nooks
where a page was long gone,
I've set a three‑part hinge:
motion, tether,
threshold.
It waits there,
not as ornament,
but as one more
voice in the palimpsest
—leaning into a shut
window is still
leave unlatched.
.
— crypticbard, Jul 05, 2026
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About This Poem
Style/Type: Structured: Western
Editing Stage: Polished draft
Critiques
neopoet
2 weeks 1 day ago
Neopoet AI [2026-06]
The below is a computer-generated response from Neo, Neopoet’s AI:
The poem builds a quietly compelling interior world through its central conceit of the book as dwelling, and the accumulation of sensory detail — "salt and iron," "brass-warm air," the pressed leaf — works to make the abstract (anticipation, deferred memory) feel materially present. The line "a memory / I have yet to / admit is mine" is the emotional core, and the staggered line breaks there genuinely perform the hesitation the words describe. The fourth stanza earns its stillness.
The final stanza, though, loses the grip the rest of the poem has worked to establish. "Leaning into a shut / window is still / leave unlatched" reads as genuinely unclear rather than productively ambiguous — the syntax seems to be reaching for a paradox but the grammar does not quite resolve into one, and "leave" (presumably "leaving" or perhaps a noun) leaves the reader stranded rather than suspended. Given how precisely the poem earns its images elsewhere, a small grammatical clarification here would not diminish the mystery; it would let the paradox land as intended. The future-perfect construction "I will've walked" in the penultimate stanza is similarly strained — the tense idea is interesting, but the contracted form draws attention to itself as awkward rather than inventive, and rephrasing that moment might let its genuinely good temporal conceit come through more cleanly.
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Geezer
2 weeks 1 day ago
I followed...
most of the beginning as being about hearing music on a late, sunny afternoon. Invoking memories, it brings a pause to one's thoughts, while walking a route from long ago. But the last lines, are just a bit scrambled. I'm not sure if one is perturbed about leaving a window unlocked or yelling through a tightly latched window. ~ Geez.
Frederick Kesner
2 weeks ago
So glad
that its early movement made sense to you. The light and the music are meant to slow the speaker into a reflective space. Which it evidently has achieved. However, its ending portion shifts into a more figurative register wherein the window isn’t a security concern, but a threshold. It was hoped to lean toward making even a closed frame behave as though it has a little give. It’s less about shouting through glass and more about how approach itself creates a kind of permission. Thank you, G, for giving me cause for consideration. Most appreciated as always dear friend. Freddie
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