Analysis of The River

William Goresko 1951 (Philadelphia, PA) – 2008 (Willow Grove, PA)



With a roar and a flash,
My life recedes on the outgoing tide
And I am left looking up
At the bright sky,
A fish out of water
On a sharp bed of stone.
As I wait for the high tide
To cradle me in its arms,
Carrying me back,
The light slowly fades
And my mind fills
With tableaus of ancient times
Peopled by beings long gone,
Locked in an endless embrace
Of birth and death, love and hate,
Destruction and creation,
Sorrow and joy,
Their faces and forms
Becoming a many-faceted panoply
Of life shifting
In serpentine fashion,
A great river on which flow
Seasons and ages, winding its way
To this point in time
Where I float suspended
Between two worlds,
One eye to the ground,
The other toward the sky,
Waiting for the moon to awaken
From her sleep with Endymion
And rising from the waves, take me home
On the ocean's billowy breast.


Scheme ABCDEFBGHIJKLMNOPQRSOTUVWXYDOFZ1
Poetic Form
Metre 101001 110110101 0111101 1011 011110 101111 1111011 1101011 10011 01101 0111 111101 1011011 1011001 1101101 0100010 1001 11001 010010100100 1110 01010 0110111 100101011 11101 111010 0111 11101 0100101 101011010 10111 010101111 101011
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 800
Words 158
Sentences 2
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 32
Lines Amount 32
Letters per line (avg) 20
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 655
Words per stanza (avg) 158
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Submitted by cuwoodford on May 31, 2021

Modified on March 05, 2023

47 sec read
9

William Goresko

William Goresko was an avid landscape photographer, a lover of backpacking and the outdoors, a voracious reader of classical literature and ardent fan of classical music as well as 60s rock and folk music. He also loved cooking and watching Sixers basketball games. He was a floor sander by trade. In 1984 at age 32 he was rendered quadriplegic in a car accident and lived for 24 more years. He retained his love of life and had a strong will to live. All poems were written a few years after the accident, typed one letter at a time, using a sip and puff device. Poems were submitted by his wife Cheryl. more…

All William Goresko poems | William Goresko Books

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