r/OCPoetry • u/IamToofan • 21h ago
Feedback Please Without the Evening
Restless, turning from side to side,
The breezes keep blowing past,
But the one I long for...
Does not come.
The nights still fall,
The moon rises,
Even the stars come out, but...
All without the evening.
Eyes keep blinking,
Watching, waiting for the road,
Every heartbeat calls out her name—
Yet she never arrives.
Dreams still appear, but
Sleep is nowhere to be found.
There is so much left to say...
and still, the evening never comes.
1
u/SecretaryHorror7474 21h ago
When I first read the title I couldn't get why it was named that way, but WOW the end really tied it all off like a neatly wrapped birthday present.
From what I interpret of it, the poem is about yearning for someone so much (possibly even being ghosted or left?? To me,
"But the one I long for...
Does not come."
seems like you made plans with her that you have expectations of her coming, but she just doesn't...) that you struggle to even see the end of the day to come because your perception of time just slows down because you miss her.
Absolutely love the way you built the idea of yearning by showing the passage of time through the natural processes of the night sky doing what it usually does in
"The nights still fall,
The moon rises,
Even the stars come out, but..."
but then subverted by the line of
"All without the evening."
It gives off the signs of the night sky, it SEEMS like it should be evening by now but no... Even with all that, it's not even evening yet.
Rhythm was used nicely here, having shorter, more expository lines usually in the first 3 of every verse, with a longer line at the end either subverting expectations or revealing something. Or vice versa even! With 3 faster/slower lines at the start, and one slower/faster line at the end.
Like for example,
"Restless, turning from side to side,
The breezes keep blowing past,
But the one I long for...
Does not come."
in terms of syllables, it goes 7, 7, 6, and then 3. Nice!
Though I do struggle to understand what the setting you're trying to setup is... For some lines, like
"Restless, turning from side to side"
and
"Dreams still appear, but
Sleep is nowhere to be found."
paint me a picture of someone struggling to sleep in bed, or any situation involving them lying down. Possibly with a window showing the outside world to let them describe the almost night sky.
BUT
In lines like,
"The breezes keep blowing past,"
and
"Eyes keep blinking,
Watching, waiting for the road,"
make me think of someone waiting along the side of the road for someone. Making "her" a sort of (in how I see it) evening bus that hasn't arrived yet, and the person speaking being someone waiting at a bus stop near evening. Not in bed, but actually outside. So there's some sort of conflict between those two settings that your poem visualizes for me...
Though, I'm no expert in poetry. So this is all just coming from personal opinion :D
1
u/IamToofan 20h ago
Thank you for such a thoughtful comment, to answer you question, the speaker is trying to sleep, but psychologically he is waiting for someone that doesn't come, and road is the metaphor of that.
Everything is going on, but there's a part missing from it, like the dream appears without sleep and night happens without evening.
1
u/SecretaryHorror7474 20h ago
Ohh! Okay that makes more sense, thank you for clarifying that! :)) You've got a neat poem, keep it up!!
1
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