Poetry by Rowan Evans

Author’s Note

This poem became the quiet conclusion to a trilogy I never intended to write.

Crossing the Sea was about direction.

Only Waiting was about the reason I needed that direction in the first place.

This piece asks a different question:

How do you keep moving when you haven’t arrived yet?

For me, the answer has always been dreams.

Not because I confuse them with reality, but because they remind me that another reality is possible.

I’ve written about dreams for years. They rarely feel random to me. They often feel like rehearsals—small glimpses of a life my mind already believes exists somewhere beyond the horizon.

The city in this poem isn’t a specific city.

The moon isn’t really the moon.

Even after spending two poems trying to strip away metaphor, I found myself sitting beside it again.

I think that’s because hope has always spoken to me symbolically.

When I’m awake, I know where I am.

When I’m asleep, I remember where I’m going.

The dream doesn’t replace reality.

It sustains me until reality catches up.

The final image—a dream folded into my chest like a map—is probably the clearest way I’ve ever described hope.

Hope isn’t certainty.

It isn’t arrival.

It’s carrying the direction with you, even when you’re still standing at the beginning of the journey.

And maybe that’s what this trilogy has been trying to say all along.

Sometimes home begins as a place.

Sometimes it becomes an ache.

Sometimes…

it’s simply the direction you’re already walking.

— Rowan Evans

Pointing Me Home (No Metaphor Left Behind)
Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tick tock, tick tock—
that’s the sound of the clock.
I listen as I wait for the escape,
a simple trip, brought on by sleep.
Because I only feel at home
in my dreams.

So as I close my eyes
and my head hits the pillow—
I follow the moon
to the ocean’s edge,
I listen to the tide—
I follow it in stride
until I find where it’s pulling me.

With every step,
I move deeper in.
Slowly sand turns to concrete
beneath my feet,
as the beach transitions
into city streets.

Streetlights flicker
like they’re remembering
they used to be stars.

The hum of the city
folds into the sound of waves,
each echo a reminder
of where I started
and where I’m going.

I walk until the moon
hangs between buildings
like it’s lost too—

like it’s looking someone to talk to.

So I sit and conversate,
I tell the moon all about the quiet ache—
the feeling that I need to change
my environment to one that aligns
more with what I feel inside.

And the moon sits with me,
just listening—so I talk some more.
Out of my heart, the words just pour.
I spill every secret, I hold nothing back
until I feel like I might collapse.

The moon listens,
patient as ever,
its light softening
the edges of my thoughts.

And when I finally fall silent,
breath trembling,
chest heavy—

it tilts itself
just enough
to remind me
I’m not alone
in the places I wander.

Tick tock, tick tock.

A return to the rhythm of the clock,
interrupting the talk—
the moon’s light gives way
to the sun’s rays,
I’m still stuck in this place—

but I’m only waiting
until I can cross the sea,
Pacific and the Philippine.

Until then,
I carry the dream like a map,
folded in my chest—

pointing me home.

Journey into the Hexverse…

[Crossing the Sea (No Metaphor Left Behind)]
A deeply personal poem about relocation, longing, and the realization that some truths naturally arrive through metaphor—even when we try to leave it behind.

[Only Waiting (No Metaphor Left Behind)]
The second poem in the No Metaphor Left Behind series, exploring the quiet ache of growing up in a place that never truly felt like home—and finally saying aloud what years of metaphor had been trying to express.

If you’re interested in more poetry, you can find it here → [The Library of Ashes]