- Writing
- Gallery
- Blog
- Publications
- Teaching
- About
- Contact
- Readers Comments
- Readers Comments – Archive 2023
- Readers Comments – Archive 2022
- Readers Comments – Archive 2021
- Readers Comments – Archive 2020
- Readers Comments – Archive 2019
- Readers Comments – Archive 2018
- Readers Comments – Archive 2017
- Readers Comments – Archive 2016
- Readers Comments – Archive 2015
- Readers Comments – Archive 2014
- Readers Comments – Archive 2013
- Readers Comments – Archive 2012
- Copyright Notice
Absolutely beautiful. Perfect timing as always, Word Artist.
It gives us plenty to think about. Ingest each word and line our soul with it! This my friends is called hope and faith. Our beautiful Earth still gives us what it has for million of years. Thank you Scottie for this thought provoking poem
The human race needs this beautiful reminder with all its going on
I believe in the imagery woven intricately into the tapestry of words, and beyond. This is beautiful!
Scott,
A PERFECT POEM! Just lovely, as always.
I’ve been reading your poems since at least 2012. Each time is some awakening—I’m not quite sure yet what is to be, or how my hollowed out remnants fold into becoming, but when my thoughts play it out they do it in silly putty. Reading you, however, I find new thoughts: if one looks out at the “… dark night” who “gathers up/ [h]er fathomlessly/ [s]equined skirts …” what one witnesses is their own folding, their own becoming on a cosmic scale. Pictures of black holes are empty in the center. Inside is where we will be, I hear you saying. Orion’s belt isn’t Orion’s, exactly, I hear you suggest. Every time I read your generous work, I find new names for comets. Keep going, please. This is one place I know where the foot meets the road.
Yes, it is perfect timing for this magical poem! So hopeful, inspiring, and thoughtful! Cheers dear man to what lies ahead!
Beautiful.
Your wonderful writing and perseverance is inspiring Scott. Every good wish!
THAT was a refreshing respite from the gloomy sputterings which are the currency of the human conversation these days.
Lovely work!
I love all of this, so it’s hard to pick one part and quote it. All of it marvelously folds together in a neat tapestry of joy.
The last three lines of this poem brought me to choke up. So Lovely and what a vision.
A beautiful sentiment wonderfully told.
Thank you Scott so very much for sharing !
What a beautiful poem about life. To be alive and well is blessed and wonderful. 🙂
This poem goes hand in hand with my celebration of life. Thank you, Scott!
Scott, on your Poem Set Against
Says something about life and living also making the reader think about as you describe this beautiful earth. Your piece of writing has a power of its own which draws the reader in making it an excellent example of poetry writing.
I salute you Scott.
Beautiful expression
Excellent. The images are very poignant, light and dark, the brightness out as stars, sequins, sparks. Such a positive view!
Great. My mind is captured by the soul that imagines the poem. Thank you
Scott has an ability to capture everyman`s journey, both with the clouds of disappointment and the light of renewal. With his juxtaposition of dark and light, hope and love prevail, and the potential for discovery, and for re-discovery endure.
Very nice!
This wonderful piece of your shining thoughts will make my day, dear Scott! Thank you kindly.
An inspring and uplifting piece! Thank you dear Scott!
What refreshing words of hope for such a time as this. Thank you!
Thanks for this
You weave your words with wondrous wisdom and magic.
Just beautiful. Exquisite imagery.
Your words sparkle with the light of purity and hope, dear Scott. So much enjoyed your eloquent phrases like ‘soft kind earth’, ‘Sequined skirts’…simply amazing! Thanks for creating this gem.
Time to dance with that starry skirt, twirl!
I just love the way you describe the night with her sequinned skirt… Sounds like a lady of my liking.
Lovely and inspirational, Scott.
Such a gentle acceptance and discovery of how much more there is in less. Who needs testosterone supplements when there are grander skirts to lift!
Despite aging, pain, and disability–despite the continuum of the New Crusades, the rise of vile fascist factions, despite the glaciers melting in our lifetime, despite the pandemic with its victims piled up like cord wood, like Jack’s deathstalk, despite Big Pharma’s opioid connections–despite dark money and larcenous lobbyists, despite the things I have given up, still, still, your words move me, and a faint flicker of hope begins again.
This was quite lovely, thank you.
Looking up to those stars, it’s hard not to dream, have hope.
Always I luv reading your poems Scott. Nice that hope tells us that night can be a beautiful, caring part of day also.
Much Love
Your poem has a lot of truths hidden away (under those sequined skirts) excellent write!
Well, when you put it that way… Marvelous!
I really, really love the last stanza. The imagery is superb.
This is a wonderful poem about enjoying the blessing of each moment. It is all we can do! I also love the imagery of the final stanza especially.
Beautifully penned!
Beautiful philosophy in your poem Scott.
This is just beautifully done. Perhaps we are not as hollowed out as we think if we still can strike such sparks. As everyone has said, the last lines are penetrating, musical and perfect.
I sincerely thank you for your sincere desire to share the most intimate thing that the poet has – these are his new works. In our crazy time, in order to see the subject better, I close my eyes! Not many people can understand this, but poets will understand. I’m glad to see you as cheerful as in the photo. It is a great happiness to create such a wonderful mosaic from fragments of life.
Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous write!
“And the dark night
Still gathers up
Her fathomlessly
Sequined skirts
Around you.” That is incredibly beautiful imagery. Wonderful write.
Scott, your words speak to me in so many ways here; I truly relate! Your closing lines are divine. You are deeply in the zone right now my friend; but then again, hasn’t that always been the case? Beautiful.
Life goes on and we have to keep believing!
There’s beauty in things set against a star-lit sky, and as your wonderfully penned piece captures. Beautiful write, Scott.
Beautiful…the earth is soft and kind and like so many others here I like the night’s sequined skirts.
Oh this is perfect. Is there a more apt description of the night sky than fathomlessly sequined skirts? I hope not
Beautiful images!
The sight of those sparks can lift our spirits like nothing else.
The sky is empty, apart from the stars, and our lives also have stars in the midst of the void.
Nice! I like it. A lot. Especially the last four lines, evoking evening’s sequined skirts gathering around me. And a full moon last night and tonight.
Your words weave a magic carpet we ride to find, still, glimmers of hope.
Beautiful
Absolutely beautiful
“And marvel
At how
Sparks
Can still fly!”
I love this stanza so much. It’s a truth the world needs to hear and should embrace. Seeing wonder in what we still–especially when times are rough–is the best kind of medicine.
You’ve given me hope with this image: I’m a spark, and I can (and will) fly! Thank you, Scott!
This is hopeful without being delusional. 🙂
Scott, this is a novel idea for me, writing of the blank and wrong pages in ones life. The blanks remind me of how a prisoner must feel, time wasted, spent on four walls, so much of his life spent that can never be recovered. A lot of conscripted GI’s feel that way in peacetime when there are no battles to fight.
I liked the dark wrapping one in her skirt. That is me, I sleep like a baby as soon as I put my feet down and close my eyes I go right to sleep…
So beautiful, yet full of strength…
It’s amazing!
Your poem is beautifully conceived ~~ a gift.
wonderFULL imagery
One of your finest works Scottie sir…So Thought provoking and insightful!
How exquisitely you have depicted the profundities of life, juxtaposed with the yin-yang of Disappointment and Excitement, Pleasure and Pain …Joy-Sorrow…The dichotomy of Darkness and Light. Yet ending on a happy positive note. Indeed One must revel in the memories and Memoirs of the wonderful heydays of Life; enough to spur us on, to keep moving…
Loved the First Three lines and the concluding verse :
Set against
A cavernously
Empty
Star-lit sky…
AND
the dark night
Still gathers up
Her fathomlessly
Sequined skirts
Around you.
That ends up with a beautiful message and Moral.
Congrats Scott sir!
With Fond Regards
Hi Scott, I have to say that I adored your piece. I liked your form, as I felt it match its rhythm of the verses. Your descriptive language provided lukewarm and comforting feelings, as this prose could describe a love from afar situation or grieving over a loss of something or someone you felt strongly for.
The prose sang a song that softly hummed and tuned each word fluently and elegantly in every line the verses. This piece possessed a voice of sentimental acceptance of either a loss or love from afar, while hiding the hurt and yearning or grief.
Very great read!!!
Nice piece Scott. Read well also.
Indeed, the light fades and we have instead many disasters~if we think IT is a connection between water, electricity, and light, we can find an explanation.Beautiful poem. God’s blessing.
You have carved out yet another brilliant piece of poetry. Just when we think, the fire has died down, the smouldering sparks rise from the ashes just like the Phoenix when we least expect. That’s the beauty of life. I love the playful, flirtatious use of the words fathomlessly…Sequined skirts in the following lines.
And the dark night
Still gathers up
Her fathomlessly
Sequined skirts
Around you.
It is almost as if the night is teasing you with her fathomlessly sequined skirt, skirting around you. It does, doesn’t it? Love it!
Once again you managed to open the season with new perspective. I never tire of your work. And await your next published poem. Currently I have all your published works. This is beautiful…
Here the Universe winks at us and shows us its layers of nightly silver attire.
I must admit this particular verse reminds me so much of the beauty that surrounds with its opposite vibes amidst this cruel pandemic. there is always JoY.
I felt younger listening to each stanza above. It provided me inspiration in an organic and simple spectacle.
More lines like sequinned skirts please. we are dazzled yet we still long for another sea to arrive.
Dear friend, how remarkably healing your words are; I truly wish that those who harbour darkness of thought and deed could, and would, read your words here. Our world would surely be a much different and better place for all to cohabitate and live appreciatively, nurturing life with such purpose and loving grace.
I truly needed to be here today, in your sphere of gentility and wholesome being. You give me a reborn faith and forbearance for life as it is, and should always be, a gift in the giving and receiving. Thank you for every moment of this, your divine purpose.
Inspiring and thoughtful! Scott, this is an amazing piece of art.
Yes! This realm in which we exist we perceive to be so inconceivably vast and as our experiences here progresses, we digress on their collective impacts on what we have become and what we have left – like a glass half full yet recognize our potential to continue in our journeys of “life” we steer by our collected wisdom in our capacity to “love” matured like the best of wines.
It is wonderous to the extent we perceive or perhaps misperceive how we sense this realm by what we see and how we have been taught to process our senses into perception? At the end of the day it does not matter really when it comes to the joy and appreciation for the beauty of it all.
Our bodies are creatures of the earth of which comes, goes and some day returns as mother nature shows us in the endless cycles of the luminaries.
Very graceful poem Scott in that you manage to say so much with so little.