Samuel Gilpin - Do You Ever Have the Feeling That the World's Gone and Left You Behind

Samuel Gilpin’s poem “Do You Ever Have the Feeling That the World’s Gone and Left You Behind” uses its lines as a catalyst to conclusion and reality. Touching upon the emptiness of a day ending, horizon light obfuscating and blurring setting, landscape, and perception, Samuel’s “Do You Ever Have the Feeling That the World’s Gone and Left You Behind” explores the lonely stillness which remains, in the liminal place between what’s real and what’s evident and what isn’t.

Do You Ever Have the Feeling That the World’s Gone and Left You Behind

there’s something primitive
in the mirage
of late horizon

expressing itself
through abandonment
and motive
and the stillness

where thinking is
to mean perception

where shadow and light
mean nothing
but themselves

what occurs
at the edge of vision
where each angle’s silhouette
is loaded
stepping through itself

the light can only
scatter against
the tightly knit pine
soaked in rain water

Samuel Gilpin

Samuel Gilpin is a poet living in Portland, OR, who holds a Ph.D. in English Lit. from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which explains why he works as a door to door salesman. A Prism Review Poetry Contest winner, he has served as the Poetry Editor of Witness Magazine and Book Review Editor of Interim. A Cleveland State University First Book Award finalist, his work has appeared in various journals and magazines, most recently in The Bombay Gin, Omniverse, and Colorado Review. His chapbook Self-Portraits as a Reddening Sky was published by Cathexis Press.