Gerhard Oevermann 🐦‍⬛
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oevermann.bsky.social
Gerhard Oevermann 🐦‍⬛
@oevermann.bsky.social
3.4K followers 4K following 3K posts
Poetry brings clarity to my divergent mind. GenX Hippie Liberal. Navy Veteran. Dogs, Cats, & Cockatoos 🏳️‍🌈 🇩🇪 🇺🇸 LGBTQ+

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oevermann.bsky.social
The Pressure of My Pen

#poetry
The Pressure of My Pen beneath today’s sentences I hear the scratching of earlier lines a summer of cicadas my mother’s hands red from the wash a dog barking in a yard that no longer exists I keep writing forward but the paper resists its fibers remember every pressure of my pen forgetting is only another layer of script -Gerhard Oevermann 11/10/25
November 11, 2025 at 12:03 AM
oevermann.bsky.social
The Perfection of Leaving

#poetry
The Perfection of Leaving we ascend the path at dawn through birch and ash each trunk white as breath held too long we say nothing listening for the soft click of acorns loosening their grip we stop where the ridge meets wind where clouds lie open like unfinished letters you touch the stone rough and warm as memory below us the valley folds itself into distance a thousand quiet lives turning toward the same light at the clearing a fox crosses the light without hesitation and I understand the clean perfection of leaving
November 2, 2025 at 4:26 PM
oevermann.bsky.social
To the Moon, in Absence

#poetry
To the Moon, in Absence I passed you by though your light was spilling like wine over the roofs and the trees stood still as if listening for your step I might have spoken might have told you how the day’s weight bent my neck so I could not lift it toward you how the city’s lamps mimicked your sheen and tricked my eye away yet you remained a patient witness in the vault above while my shadow lengthened behind me like guilt if you find me again take me as the tide takes a leaf it never meant to lose carry me out until the shore is only a rumor
October 18, 2025 at 5:32 PM
oevermann.bsky.social
some part of me waited
for the sky to open
as if revelation were a thing
that needed clearing

I’ve learned not to chase clarity
some truths are meant to blur
like moonlight through clouds
or the outline of your face
in a dream I wake too soon from

#poetry
Photo of moonlight shining through a cloudy night sky.
October 10, 2025 at 3:12 AM
oevermann.bsky.social
October 6, 2025 at 3:11 AM
oevermann.bsky.social
the moon hums low
like a cello bow
drawn against
the spine of the earth
good night 🌙
#poetry
October 3, 2025 at 3:57 AM
oevermann.bsky.social
Palimpsest
#poetry #Petersburg #CivilWar
Photo of Civil War train tracks in Petersburg, Virginia being reclaimed by the Earth. Palimpsest the rusted tracks run through the field curved lines swallowed by green iron once bright with fire and freight now crumbling back into earth I touched the rail and felt nothing yet I knew it remembered the weight of wheels the smoke drifting over the battlefields where bodies had fallen and I thought of how the earth rewrites what is left behind without judgment without pause the same way time covers us
September 23, 2025 at 11:06 PM
oevermann.bsky.social
bed as raft
current as night
carry me past
the reef of what if
#poetry
My dog and two cats dreaming on the bed. bed as raft current as night carry me past the reef of what if
September 23, 2025 at 3:35 AM
oevermann.bsky.social
Saturday at the River

#poetry #writing #writingcommunity #poetrycommunity
#Appommatox #CivilWar
Saturday at the River I walked down to the Appomattox where the water moves without hesitation afternoon sun bright on its surface and the stones underneath holding their silence I thought of the soldiers who once crossed here their steps heavy with endings their voices scattered into the river air now the banks carry only grass and the occasional bird yet if I stand still long enough I can almost hear the weight of their silence folded into the current that goes on carrying it
September 20, 2025 at 10:25 PM
oevermann.bsky.social
The Long Silence
#poetry
The Long Silence above the ridge beyond the clouds they pass unseen their weight bending the distances I cannot measure sometimes I think your voice is among them now circling in silence never falling away but never returning I look up into the dark and though I see nothing I feel the pull of what is nameless the slow turning of orbits that will not break the long silence that waits for us all -Gerhard Oevermann 9/19/25
September 19, 2025 at 11:10 PM
oevermann.bsky.social
For @alanparrywriter.co.uk and
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
I wrote this recently and adapted it for this #PoemsAbout #SilentPlanets. Remembering someone who is no longer here.

#poetry #writing #writingcommunity #poetrycommunity

Quiet Orbits
Quiet Orbits yesterday I went out after the last light left the ridge the field a low sea of grass moving above it the dark kept its courses unspoken and I felt the ancient pull that does not begin or end I gave it no names the stars needed none they were already on their way from before our voices began I walked down toward the river by the fence line posts leaning like forgotten questions wire gone back to brown in the weather crickets threaded the edges of night the sound a narrow path I could follow until water lifted out of the dark carrying itself as it always has I thought of your breath beside me in other years how as children we learned to look up together not for answers but for that larger patience the bodies above us turning where we could not see each orbit a lesson in continuing without witness without reply the river gave me my face and let it go the stones kept their shapes in the current I touched one and felt time simply being itself no promise no warning only the weight that holds what is here until it is time to move in the field again I paused a thin wind moved the tall heads of grass and something in me leaned with them not surrender not refusal only the small agreement of moment with moment the sky widening by degrees toward morning planets somewhere beyond sight drawing their wide ellipses through the dark so slowly the word slow has no measure I said your name in the quiet and listened not to be answered only to hear how it lives now part voice part distance the way light lives after the star has gone on arriving here as a softness on the ground that shows itself only when we stop to look when I turned back the path closed behind my feet the grass stood up in its own time the river kept speaking to the stones and overhead the silent planets continued not keeping us and not letting us go holding instead the room in which we walk until we learn to walk as they do carried and carrying present in the unbroken turning of the dark into day
September 19, 2025 at 10:46 PM
oevermann.bsky.social
Psyche’s stolen kiss,
softer than the breath of dawn,
hid from every god

#haikufeels #haiku
Painting of the goddess Psyche
September 15, 2025 at 12:50 PM
oevermann.bsky.social
Without Asking to Be Remembered

#poetry (alt text)
I walked out into the morning the light still uncertain among the branches shadows lying across the ground as though they were waiting for someone to notice I followed the path where the leaves had fallen long before I came their silence spoke to me not in words but in the way they rested without asking to be remembered & I thought of the voices that once filled this air the laughter that rose in the evenings the questions that never found answers all carried away like water slipping through its own reflection I kept walking and the river appeared moving without hesitation its surface breaking into a thousand mirrors none of which stayed I leaned down and touched it but the moment was already gone & the sound of it continued as if nothing had happened as if nothing ever could happen except what was already passing on the far bank the trees bent into the current their roots tangled with stones older than any memory they did not resist they leaned as though listening to something I could not hear & I wondered if silence itself might be a kind of hearing that outlasts the need for answers I thought then of your hand in mine how it fit without effort the way a shadow fits the ground and how it slipped away not into absence but into another form of presence that follows me still though I do not speak of it when I stop walking it arrives and when I move again it goes on ahead like the path itself always leading somewhere I cannot remain the sky shifted and the birds lifted out of the trees without warning their wings making a sound that might have been the air remembering itself I looked up until they were gone and the space they left behind was filled with light as though nothing had left at all & I knew then that the world had never been waiting for me yet it carried me as it carried everything without choosing without keeping and that even as I turned back the grass already rising in my footsteps it would continue without end without forgetting without needing a reason
September 14, 2025 at 4:47 PM
oevermann.bsky.social
Your book arrived from Amazon today. Beautifully done! It is on top of my stack. I’m impressed with the work you’ve put into it and looking forward to reading. Kudos!
The First Scar - A Book of Verse By Scott Andrew Kass
September 13, 2025 at 9:29 PM
oevermann.bsky.social
Each Time I Forget

#poetry
Each Time I Forget the day folds into itself without leaving behind what it was the light gathers on the walls and then leaves them bare I have seen this countless times and each time I forget I tell myself I will remember the shape of the morning or the sound of a bird calling once before it disappears into silence but the forgetting is part of it and I am carried into the next moment without holding anything except the sense that I was here though I do not know how -Gerhard Oevermann 9/13/25
September 13, 2025 at 5:32 PM
oevermann.bsky.social
Stillness

#poetry
Stillness I leaned against the stone wall and it gave nothing back its silence was older than my questions the lichen spread across its face like a script no one could read yet I felt its meaning in the weight of its stillness which was not an answer but something closer to the truth I could not hold -Gerhard Oevermann 9/13/25
September 13, 2025 at 5:31 PM
oevermann.bsky.social
Remembering

#poetry
Remembering the bird rose suddenly from the field its wings beating against the morning I thought of your face then not the one I last saw but the one you carried when we were young it drifted with the bird into a sky that forgot us but still turned toward day as if nothing had been lost -Gerhard Oevermann 9/13/25
September 13, 2025 at 5:30 PM
oevermann.bsky.social
Grandmother

#poetry
Grandmother I turned into the field at dusk the grass heavy with insects I could not see their voices filled the air like a net through which the light was already failing and I thought of the evenings when you stood at the edge of the veranda waiting for a name to be called though it never was yet the silence carried you longer than any word could have and still it waits there though you do not -Gerhard Oevermann 9/13/25
September 13, 2025 at 5:29 PM
oevermann.bsky.social
The Garden Left Untended

#poetry
The Garden Left Untended the morning comes slowly over roofs that did not exist when I was born light passes from branch to branch without speaking and I keep thinking of those I loved who do not rise with the day their silence gathers with the shadows and I walk through it as though it were a garden left untended but still growing and every step is a question the earth remembers long after I am gone -Gerhard Oevermann 9/11/25
September 11, 2025 at 11:18 PM
oevermann.bsky.social
Baphomet in Winter

The statue fell-
lilacs bruised against the snow,
apple split like silence broken.

Hands chose ruin
over words,
but the cold air holds
what they tried to erase.

Freedom lingers here,
not in the stone itself
but in the right to shape it,
to stand it in the light
for all to see.
Image of a statue of Baphamet. Baphomet in Winter The statue fell- lilacs bruised against the snow, apple split like silence broken. Hands chose ruin over words, but the cold air holds what they tried to erase. Freedom lingers here, not in the stone itself but in the right to shape it, to stand it in the light for all to see.
September 7, 2025 at 9:30 PM
oevermann.bsky.social
Wednesday

#poetry
it is wednesday the day without edges that leans between what has begun and what has not ended the sparrows have been at the eaves since dawn their chatter louder than any plan I’ve made the light reminds me half is already gone half has not yet begun and I am standing in the middle with nothing to show but this moment
August 27, 2025 at 1:24 PM
oevermann.bsky.social
Selenophile

#BornBattleReady #Selenophile #Poem #Poetry #PoetryCommunity
Selenophile at midnight my thoughts fracture like glass beneath her steady glow day’s clamor unthreads and I hear myself her light lifts the past moths circling a flame that never burns only holds me sleepless I count the hours by the tilt of her face each shadow teaching that wholeness is another name for vanishing I pace the room my silence heavier than any voice her silver gaze a mirror of unrest when she slips behind cloud I breathe again grateful for the dark yet knowing absence is only another form of return -Gerhard Oevermann 8/23/25
August 23, 2025 at 9:11 PM
oevermann.bsky.social
August 17, 2025 at 3:36 AM
oevermann.bsky.social
For @alanparry83.bsky.social and
@brokenspinearts.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout #Ceasefire
I wrote this a few months back and have recently updated.
#poetry #writing #writingcommunity #poetrycommunity

The Brightest Stars
The Brightest Stars there are shoes lined up at the edge of a crater, small ones- some still tied, some burned. in Gaza, a boy draws birds on broken cement with a red crayon. his sister says they are phoenixes. a word he repeats without knowing its meaning. in Ukraine, frost settles on the ribs of buildings where families once cooked soup and listened for the sound of returning. now there is only wind threading itself through the hollow bones of walls. the children do not speak of peace. they speak of silence-of what came before, of what might still be waiting beyond the smoke. above them-moonlight, hides all, but the brightest stars. some lights vanish. some refuse. they are not louder, only persistent. and in the dark, a hand is still reaching-not upward, not to heaven, just outward, for another hand. -Gerhard Overmann 8/10/25 (updated poem from 4/3/25)
August 14, 2025 at 1:33 PM
oevermann.bsky.social
The Last Time a Loved One Uses Your Name

#poetry #writing #writingcommunity #poetrycommunity
The Last Time a Loved One Uses Your Name it was morning though I did not notice the room was smaller than it is now your voice was part of the air I was breathing it came to me without ceremony and went on without knowing it would never return outside the wind was brushing the side of the house a bird moved from one shadow to another I remember the shape of the quiet that followed you how it waited until I understood it was still there -Gerhard Oevermann 8/12/25
August 12, 2025 at 10:18 PM