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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: ocean imagery

  • When the Moon Answered the Ravens | A Gothic Dream Poem About Healing and Belonging by Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    Some dreams begin in darkness, but not all darkness is empty. Sometimes, the things we recognize by instinct—ravens calling, roses blooming, the pull of the tide, the quiet presence of the moon—become the only landmarks we need.

    This poem wanders through an abyss where absence becomes invitation, where questions lead deeper than answers, and where the familiar waits beyond the silence. It is a journey through the spaces between fear and comfort, memory and discovery, nothingness and belonging.

    And perhaps the moon was never truly missing. Perhaps some forms of light simply require us to keep walking until we’re ready to see them.

    — Rowan Evans

    A poet kneels beside moonlit crimson roses in a dark abyss as ravens circle beneath a returning moon and distant ocean waves.
    Even in the deepest abyss, some light knows how to find you.

    When the Moon Answered the Ravens
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I had a dream last night—

    a line I’ve written too many times,
    but this one was different—

    there was no moon, no tide—
    no shoreline—it was pitch black,
    an abyss—just me and nothingness.

    Then I heard the raven’s calls—
    and it didn’t feel bizarre at all.

    It felt oddly—

    calming—

    I stumbled further into the dark,
    listening to raven after raven call—
    it was weird, this unkindness
    didn’t feel very unkind at all—
    I tripped on something,
    which was odd—
    because there was nothing
    to trip on.

    I fell—

    hit the ground—

    the ravens didn’t make a sound.

    Slowly, I rose to my feet—
    surprised to see, a rose at my feet.
    Illuminated by a single sliver
    of silver light—
    it caught my eye,
    so I knelt down—

    as my eyes scanned
    the surrounding abyss—

    I saw them.

    Roses,
    a dozen of them—
    each lit by its own sliver
    of dedicated lunar light—
    which told me,
    it was night—

    but something didn’t feel right—
    where was the moon at?

    What was the source of this light?

    The questions didn’t stop me—
    I kept walking—moving further,
    deeper into the abyss—
    when suddenly the taste of salt
    hit my lips—
    and the ground begin to shift,
    it moved like waves—

    now I couldn’t stop,
    something was pulling me—
    something I couldn’t see,
    but could feel it—
    a thread tied to my heart,
    pulling me along.

    It was guiding me—
    but at the same time,
    there was something
    pushing me—
    and I dropped a hint
    five lines back—

    what could that be?

    And as I let the thread
    pull me along—
    I began to notice
    the light—

    an image trembling—

    it was shimmering,
    across the top of the abyss—
    eyes lifted, I saw it,
    the thing I missed—
    hanging high above,
    it was my favorite witness—
    the one I could always sit with.

    Finally—

    after what felt like
    an eternity of silence—
    the ravens started
    to speak again—

    and the moon
    answered them—

    that’s when the world came alive.
    I could hear the ocean waves,
    feel the mist on my face—
    taste the salt on my lips,
    ocean kissed—

    the smell of roses
    perfumed the air—
    it’s like the world
    suddenly became aware
    that I was even there—

    I was on my knees,
    watching the waves—

    smile on my face—

    because in the back of my mind,
    I knew…

    the moon would never abandon—
    the tide would never
    refuse to guide—
    the ravens
    would never leave my side,
    while everything I feel—

    an ocean deep, an ocean wide—

    the roses grow in a garden shaped by
    all the beauty and pain in my life.

    Journey into the Hexverse

    [You Still Pop Into My Brain]
    Sometimes, someone from your past still wanders into your thoughts—not because you want them back, but because they once held a place in your everyday life. A reflective poem about disappointment, growth, and the strange persistence of memory after moving on.

    [Louder Than the Rain]
    A short confessional poem about the overwhelming noise of anxious thoughts, the strange silence of feeling alone in a crowded room, and finding a way to translate pain into words.

    [Let Me Be Pacific]
    A lyrical poem about sitting beside the Pacific Ocean and discovering that an enormous body of water can become a bridge between distant hearts. Through ocean imagery, wordplay, and reflections on California and the Philippines, Let Me Be Pacific explores how love and poetry can cross even the greatest distances.

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

  • Dreaming Wrong | A Surreal Poem About Dreams, Disorientation, and the Uncanny

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    Dreaming Wrong came from the strange feeling of being inside a dream that looks familiar but somehow isn’t yours. The moon is still there. The path is still recognizable. The water is still waiting—but everything has been rearranged just enough to make the entire landscape feel wrong.

    I wanted to play with that feeling of dream logic: the moment when your mind recognizes the pieces but realizes they no longer fit together. The ocean becomes a pond, the tide disappears, the moon loses its reflection, and even the heavens become impossible to navigate.

    For me, the unsettling part isn’t that the dream is frightening. It’s that it feels incorrect. Like waking life has been reconstructed by someone who knows what everything is supposed to look like—but doesn’t quite understand what it means.

    Sometimes the strangest dreams aren’t nightmares.

    Sometimes they’re simply dreaming wrong.

    — Rowan Evans

    A surreal nighttime landscape where a person kneels beside a dark pond beneath a pale moon with no reflection in the water.
    Sometimes the nightmare isn’t frightening—it is simply familiar enough to feel wrong.

    Dreaming Wrong
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I slipped from waking life,
    drifted into night—
    but it felt different,
    like the imagery wasn’t right.

    The moon looked paler than usual,
    so I asked if she was sick—
    of course, she didn’t answer back.
    But I followed the same paths
    that I had many nights before.

    I walked along
    until I hit the edge of the—

    pond?

    Where was the ocean at,
    where was the shore—
    and why couldn’t I
    feel the tide anymore?

    Everything felt off there.

    I was on my knees,
    staring at the water—
    where was the shimmer,
    I couldn’t see the reflection
    of the moon—

    I looked straight ahead,
    and the silence seemed
    to stretch further.

    Then my eyes looked to the sky
    and I realized that I couldn’t
    map the path across the heavens.

    It’s like as soon my head hit the pillow—
    I entered somebody else’s mind,
    because nothing about this
    felt like mine—

    I was dreaming wrong.

    That’s the only thing
    that can explain,
    what was going on.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [Beach to Beach (How I Get There)]
    A dream becomes a journey between familiar shores and unfamiliar cities in Beach to Beach (How I Get There), a poem about imagined travel, ocean crossings, longing, and the places we hope to someday reach while awake.

    [Where the Metaphors Lead]
    Some truths are easier to write than they are to say aloud. “Where the Metaphors Lead” explores the quiet space between dreams, confession, and the courage it takes to let another person know how deeply they’ve become woven into your inner world.

    [The World Shifted Around Us]
    The world transformed around us—beach, city streets, jungle—but we never moved. Sometimes love isn’t found in words, but in the quiet certainty of someone remaining clear while everything else fades.

    [The Streets I Walk When I Sleep]
    “The Streets I Walk When I Sleep” is a deeply intimate free verse poem about recurring dreams, emotional connection, longing across distance, and the strange feeling of remembering places and moments that have never happened in waking life.

    [Across the Page-cific]
    A playful, autobiographical journey through the strange places poetry can take me—from sandwich heartbreak and pasta diss poems to gothic monsters, mythology, ravens, ghosts, and storms across the page. Beneath the absurdity is something deeply personal: the realization that writing gave me a way to rebuild myself, piece by piece.

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

  • Where the Metaphors Lead | A Confessional Poem About Love, Dreams & Finding Your Voice

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    Some poems begin with an idea. Others begin with a feeling that refuses to leave.

    This one was written in the early hours of the morning, during that familiar stretch of time when the world grows quiet enough for my thoughts to become louder than everything else.

    I’ve always found it easier to write than to speak. Conversations ask for immediate answers. Poetry allows me to sit with a feeling until I understand it well enough to translate it into language.

    Many of the recurring images throughout my recent work—the moon, the tide, distant shores, dreams, and city streets—have become a personal symbolic language. They aren’t separate subjects anymore. They all point toward the same emotional center.

    This poem finally acknowledges that.

    Sometimes the metaphors aren’t hiding anything.

    Sometimes they’re quietly leading us back to the truth we were trying not to say.

    — Rowan Evans

    A lone writer journaling by moonlight at four in the morning while the moon reflects across a calm ocean beyond the window.
    Some feelings only find their voice after midnight, where dreams, memory, and metaphor become impossible to tell apart.

    Where the Metaphors Lead
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    It’s funny how I find myself here again,
    four AM—it’s just me, the music and my pen.
    I’ve got so many thoughts with so much to say,
    my lips move but no sound comes—
    like I lost one voice, when I found the other.

    And it’s not that I can’t speak—

    it’s just that words don’t come easily,
    when they try to come verbally.

    But on the page,
    everything lines up—

    the thoughts, the feelings,
    the things I never say out loud.
    Ink doesn’t trip over itself
    the way my voice does.

    So here are a few
    truths for you—

    there is a woman
    she is on my mind constantly,
    yeah, she is simultaneously
    the easiest and hardest to talk to.

    She makes me feel like I can be me—
    completely.

    And honestly,
    I’ve never really had that
    with anybody else—

    every beautiful line I write
    about the moon in the sky,
    the ocean and tide—

    yeah, most of the time
    it leads back to her
    in my mind.

    And every dream, I translate in ink—
    the shores I walk in sleep,
    secrets I try not to keep,
    even when it’s hard to speak—

    I lay them on the page and pray
    that they’ll reach their destination one day.

    So I sit here,
    four AM again,
    writing the things
    I can’t say out loud—

    hoping one day
    I’ll find the courage
    to speak them aloud.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [The World Shifted Around Us]
    The world transformed around us—beach, city streets, jungle—but we never moved. Sometimes love isn’t found in words, but in the quiet certainty of someone remaining clear while everything else fades.

    [Every Night, The Same Flight]
    Every night begins with the same flight. Between wakefulness and sleep, an airport appears, a familiar shoreline waits beyond the journey, and the same dream asks whether some destinations find us before we’re ready to find them.

    [Where I Belonged]
    A bedroom becomes an airport in the space between sleep and waking. Where I Belonged explores liminal consciousness, uncertainty, and the strange moments when reality feels suspended between two worlds

    [Opposites Coasts of the Same Silence]
    What separates two people isn’t always an ocean. Sometimes it’s the silence between everything left unsaid. Opposite Coasts of the Same Silence explores longing, distance, dreams, and the quiet hope that even across impossible divides, someone might still hear your voice.

    [Ocean Waves (1, 4, 3)]
    A moonlit shoreline, a rowboat full of ducks, a piggybank with no cents, and a confession hidden in plain sight. Ocean Waves (1, 4, 3) explores how humor, wordplay, and absurdity can become a side door to vulnerability when the truth feels too difficult to say directly.

    [Call of the Tide]
    A poem about identity, displacement, and the quiet pull toward something beyond the shoreline you were born on. Sometimes the tide calls louder than the anthem.

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

  • Ocean Waves (1, 4, 3) | A Love Poem About Humor, Vulnerability & Hidden Confessions

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This poem began as a collection of bad jokes.

    Or at least that was the excuse.

    Sometimes I start writing with no destination in mind. A phrase appears. Then a pun. Then another. A moon becomes a metaphor. Ducks end up in a rowboat. A piggybank loses all its cents.

    And somewhere in the middle of all that nonsense, something honest sneaks in.

    I’ve noticed that humor often works like a side door.

    There are things I can say directly. There are things I can say through poetry. And then there are things that feel easier to approach sideways, hidden beneath wordplay, jokes, and absurd little detours.

    This piece lives in that space.

    The speaker keeps drifting away from the point, circling it rather than naming it. Every joke becomes a delay tactic. Every pun buys another moment before the truth has to be spoken aloud.

    Because sometimes vulnerability isn’t difficult because you don’t know what you feel.

    Sometimes it’s difficult because you know exactly what you feel.

    And saying it out loud makes it real.

    The title’s parenthetical reference, “1, 4, 3,” comes from an old numerical shorthand for a phrase many people know by heart. I liked the idea of building an entire poem around avoiding a confession, only to hide it in plain sight.

    In the end, the poem says exactly what it means.

    It just takes the scenic route to get there.

    — Rowan Evans

    A solitary figure stands on a moonlit beach beside gentle ocean waves while silver moonlight reflects across the water beneath a glowing night sky.
    Sometimes the longest journey to the truth is the scenic route—through moonlight, wordplay, ocean waves, and all the jokes we tell before we finally say what we mean.

    Ocean Waves (1, 4, 3)
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I stand on the shore
    giving ocean waves—
    begging the tide
    to take me away.

    I trace the moon
    across the sky,
    I map it in rhyme.
    Line after—
    silver-lined metaphor.

    I got my ducks in a row
    boat—is that what the paddles for?
    I know the direction,
    what would I panic for?

    You might be confused—
    I know that made no sense,
    like an empty piggybank.
    No cents, thoughts scattered
    like loose change.

    I use jokes
    to mask the truth sometimes.

    It makes what I want to say,
    an easier pill to swallow—

    1 letter
    followed by 4
    then 3—

    Together, they mean
    you mean the most to me.
    By your side—

    is where I’m supposed to be.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [1-4-3]
    A poem about love that isn’t rooted in need, but in choice. About finding safety not as a cage, but as a place where fear finally stops running—and stays.

    [1-4-3 (Tongue Tied)]
    A vulnerable poem about holding back the words that matter most. 1-4-3 (Tongue Tied) explores fear, emotional suppression, and the quiet ache of wanting to say “I love you.”

    [What I Want to Say]
    Sometimes the hardest words to say are the simplest ones. What I Want to Say explores love, hesitation, and the fear of what might change if you finally speak.

    [No Parachute]
    A poetic reflection on falling in love without hesitation—raw, uncertain, and without a safety net.

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

  • Memories From a Life Yet to Come | A Poem About Dreams, Longing, and Emotional Alignment

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    Some dreams feel less like fantasy and more like memory.

    Not literal memory—something stranger than that.

    A feeling. A pull. A version of yourself that already exists somewhere ahead of you, waiting to be caught up to.

    I’ve written a lot about displacement, longing, and feeling emotionally out of sync with the place I was born into. But this piece isn’t rooted in resentment. It’s quieter than that.

    This poem came from the feeling of seeing glimpses of alignment before you’ve fully arrived there yet.

    The strange comfort of closing your eyes and feeling more connected to yourself in dreams than you do while awake.

    Not because sleep is escape— but because sometimes dreams reveal the shape of what your heart has been reaching toward all along.

    — Rowan Evans

    A solitary figure stands at the edge of the ocean at twilight, looking toward distant city lights across the water as waves roll onto the shore.
    Some places feel familiar long before we ever arrive there.

    Memories From a Life Yet to Come
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I close my eyes—
    hear the crashing waves,
    taste the salt on my lips,
    feel the wind in my hair.

    I feel like I’m floating—
    even lying in bed.

    When I close my eyes—
    I travel in my head.

    It’s like I remember things
    I haven’t lived yet.
    Memories from a life
    yet to come.

    I see the life
    I want to lead,
    while I live the life
    I want to leave.

    Not because I hate it.

    I’m just misaligned.
    A little off-center,
    a little out of sync.

    It’s like I follow the waves,
    because I was never meant
    for this shore.

    Awake is the nightmare,
    asleep is when I open my eyes,
    and I can see the streets—

    where my life
    will finally align.

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