Gerhard Oevermann šŸ¦ā€ā¬›

@oevermann.bsky.social

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Divergent Hippie Liberal Poet. šŸ³ļøā€šŸŒˆ šŸ‡©šŸ‡Ŗ šŸ‡ŗšŸ‡ø LGBTQ+ Note: I am notoriously bad at answering DM in a timely manner. Comment on a post to get my attention.

Photo of machine gun nipples from the Austin Powers movie.
Photo of pine trees on a mountain overlooking the valley. Fog coming up from the valley. On a grey day.
The sun setting across a green field behind the trees. Photo taken in Virginia, July 2026.
Buddha cat statue
Photograph of the river on a gray and bleak day.
Photo of a narrow dirt path winding through windswept grassland beneath towering dark storm clouds, with distant rain falling on the horizon and pale light breaking through at the left.
Photograph of storm clouds above southern Virginia
Photo of a man walking through a pine forest. It is hazy with sunlight streaming in.
Photograph of a dark storm rolling in over the green field with a few small houses in the distance
Photograph of the sun seen through the clouds
I have come to believe that heaven is not a kingdom but an interval a clearing in the mind when the one who seeks it disappears this morning I walked along the river among birds and the soft geometry of early light for a moment I was not myself nor was I other than myself I was only a witness or maybe awareness briefly free and the world for an instant did not need to be understood did not need to become a sign a lesson a meaning it was enough that it was and then almost gently my thoughts returned and the kingdom closed not gone only hidden again inside the birds inside the light inside the body walking home with heaven carried quietly under the mind -Gerhard Oevermann 2026
Photograph of red peonies after rain
Photograph of the bright white sun shining over the trees and part of the field. There are a few clouds in the blue sky.
Photograph of the moon behind clouds. Lighting the edges of the clouds and brightening the sky. Trees and the city below.
Photo taken in the woods at near complete darkness
A blue sky with the sun shining brightly and the tops of trees below.
My white dog walking me on a path through the woods this morning. Sunlight streaming through the trees.
Late afternoon sun on the Appomattox River. Seen through branches, the sun glistening on the water.
Photograph of a winter field with trees in the far distance on the horizon and a hazy sky
Late afternoon on the Appomattox River. Sun through the trees on the shore casting shadows.
Photograph of an abandoned home in Dinwiddie County, Virginia. The house is surrounded by trees and a field. Storm clouds with sun shining through.
4/3/26 Late afternoon Sun on the Appomattox River
Photo of wisteria covering a small leafless tree.
Late afternoon sunlight through the trees at the edge of the field.
Dusk on the Appomattox river. Purple sky and gold sun disappearing over the horizon are reflected in the water. The Shores are dark, almost black.
Photo taken today. Sunlight streaming through pine trees onto Lenten roses.
Photograph of a storm front coming in as a straight line over houses and a city street
Photograph of Robert Arnesonā€™s Yin and Yang
A photograph that I took recently of the sun through clouds
Photograph of the window of an abandoned trailer. There is a photograph of a man visible through the broken window hanging on the wall.
One the Six Devas around the Tian Tan Buddha on Lantau Island by Hong Kong. I took this photo while visiting there a number of years ago.
Cat and dog best friends.
Photo of a group of dandelions that I took this morning
transcendence there came a time when the names fell away not in neglect more as the light leaves a wall at evening and the road which they had trusted for its going on thinned into grass and then into rumor the fences leaned and were gone the pines gathered their old silence the stars returned uninterrupted far off one bright light for whom they never knew it was enough to stand there with the world no longer answering to the old words and hear somewhere beyond or within life going on without asking -Gerhard Oevermann 2026
after rain the trenches hold small pieces of sky and for a while that is enough nothing asks to be explained not the crow not the wet grass or the call far off coyote or distance finding voice one by one what is here returns water to water root to root mist to the low places leaving only a brief disturbance which is all most lives become once their names are forgotten -Gerhard Oevermann 2026
Photograph of me from the back, walking on a path towards the sunrise with fog on the ground
the way in walking here it occurs that the path may not be through the field but through the moment that opens and closes without asking a gate made of air the grass still doing its old work of being green and not remembering how it got there i step and the world steps with me not forward not back only further in
The Conjecture of Wolves in the snow the wolves are not wolves at first but a conjecture of moving shadows an argument the night makes i remember or invent a book in which every footprint is a letter and the whole meadow a page that refuses to keep its text the pack crosses the white like a single thought divided into bodies as if multiplicity were only a trick the mind employs to avoid its own solitude each breath is a brief fog erased as it appears memory too a tracker in the dark following a scent without a name if i were another man or this man in another winter i might say the wolves are hunger or fate or the old logic of blood but tonight they are something quieter a moving form of time a sentence without punctuation that will not stop for my meaning the moon cold and exact as a coin offered to charon pretends to be a witness the trees hold their black signatures over the page when the wolves vanish into the pines the field remains immaculate and yet altered as if the world had been read aloud and the reader closing the book left no mark except the faint knowledge that it would be read again -Gerhard Oevermann 2026
Photograph of the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet. The deepest canyon in the world. When it descends into India, it becomes the Brahmaputra River.
The Mountain it is not the mountain that endures stone is only a brief arrangement it is the turning the slow consent to a light already leaving continents lean into its passing oceans receive the long hand of dark faces lift not knowing what crosses them distance not absence the way light keeps moving after it has forgotten what it touched and when the planet rolls deeper into its own shadow the mountain will remain without witness carrying the warmth of vanished suns -Gerhard Oevermann 2026
the ones who do not answer i call your names into the dusk behind the barn the light fading along the roofline no one answers the world adjusts around the absence a cricket starts a gate opens in the wind you used to say time is only what we notice leaving i am still noticing grass grows over everything the path does not disappear -Gerhard Oevermann 2026
Enough the sky does not keep what it touches the wind learns nothing from us it moves through the trees as always what burned burned once without promise without return the night does not hold us it passes stars appear and are already leaving what we were was real that is enough the earth continues without comment -Gerhard Oevermann 2026
aphelion your light recedes gentled by distance not gone only less a long breath after confession silence has weight not emptiness i move slower having shed the urgency of your nearness memory pales into angles and frost small perfection traced in ice from here even you are merciful and i carry your echo a vow quiet enough to keep
the poem that cannot be written she looks for a doorway in language and finds only a mirror she did not ask for she turns it to the wall and begins again no hymn no lesson no clean arc only this a mouth trying not to take a distance that keeps paying itself to remain elsewhere what she knows is the sea exists and she cannot cross it what she knows is names exist then stop what she knows is her quiet is not innocence so she writes as one would set down a cup of water carefully on a shaking table
Close-up of a white coffee cup on a matching saucer on a rustic wooden table in warm sunlight, with a spoon on the saucer, scattered coffee beans nearby, and a softly blurred background showing a glass of water, a jar, and a potted plant by a window.
The Blur the world feels footnoted a small number hanging in the air pointing to a page beyond my life i move through days as if translating from a language i used to know everything is ordinary but the ordinary does not sit flush it is layered two transparencies out of alignment and i am the blur trying to pass for real
the far Meridian not here not there the line is not a line only the difference between before and after i have stood on it without knowing the world did not change except the light fell differently on my shoulder the wind kept moving through the branches and something in me shifted without a sound as if i had crossed into a country with no name what i love is still here leaving -Gerhard Oevermann 2026
Proof winter is honest it doesnā€™t promise permanence only its clear arithmetic one leaf plus time equals soil one name plus silence equals myth beneath the snow roots continue their unseen work dark patience slow persistence the future speaking its first green word the thaw doesnā€™t announce itself it leaks it loosens it turns the frozen hours back into water the city remembers it is mortal the river remembers it is a road light returns not as mercy as recurrence iā€™ve remembered again what i knew as a child and chose to forget everything i love will vanish and still it happens as if loss were not loveā€™s opposite but its proof -Gerhard Oevermann 2026
the yearā€™s last procession the night collects its scattered coal and sets it in the sky while down the lane as slow as soul a darker page goes by i see the year in pilgrim cloth with holly at its throat its pockets full of broken oaths and letters that i wrote behind it like a hush of hooves go all i would not name regrets like wolves and kinder loves still carrying their flame then at the edge of midnightā€™s line a woman dressed in rime lifts up her lantern thin resigned and lets it weigh out time she turns a key no hand can see the old year takes its leave the air grows sharp as evergreen she turns away to grieve -Gerhard Oevermann 2025
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Yule snow comes down in patient flakes and hushes road and rail the hedges wear their thorny lace the night grows broad and pale i go where pines make narrowing aisles and resin sweet as prayer a bonfire speaks in fox-red tongues to whoever still comes there holly gleams like struck-up blood oak stands dark and true the old songs rise without a book and find their way right through they say the year has two fierce kings one leaf and bark, one bone and on this night the green one turns and gives the dark its throne i hold my hands above the fire as embers fly like seed the dark is not a wolf tonight but something i can feed -Gerhard Oevermann 2025
Solstice the sun is least the fields are still the sky turns slate the air turns chill and frost begins its quiet art to etch its iron into hearts i walk where hemlocks crowd the lane their needles black with resin-rain the last light thins a dimming thread then slips behind the ridge and is dead they say tonight the old ones near soft-footed drawn by stove and cheer so offerings set on sill and plate a small respect for what may wait out in the woods the white stag moves no sound beneath his hidden hooves his antlers hold a frozen gleam as if the dark itself can dream and in that stillness i understand the world obeys a quiet hand no hymn no bell just this release the light turns back the dark will cease -Gerhard Oevermann 2025
Lord of Winter the first snow comes as a messenger not loud not hurried a pale hand laid upon the world to hush the bramble and the road in the hemlockā€™s deeper shade something older than memory leans near the bark and listens as an old god listens the creek goes black beneath its ice a sealed throat still singing and in that glass I think I see the antlered lord of winter lift his crown of frost and pass without a sound there are stories in the smoke that do not come from wood old women stirring porridge and stirring weather with the same spoon till the wind grows sharp and the moon keeps her distance the fox runs clean a liturgy along my fenceā€™s iron ribs and each small print he leaves behind is written like a charm against the forgetting of the far fields I have heard the pines at midnight trade rumors with the stars of hollow kings beneath the hills and brides of snow unburied and a pale mare that drinks the dark from every thawing ditch yet nothing frightens me so much as how the world agrees to be remade in white to take the cold as sacrament to let the familiar doorstone turn strange beneath my boot so I go out with bread and salt as my grandmother told me and set them on the sill for whatever walks the orchard when the owls have ceased their counting and the last lamp holds its fire if it should come that quiet guest I will not ask its lineage I will not speak of saints or sin only hold my hands open and learn at last what winter wants of me
Familiar Fiction Familiar Fiction in the first storm i am myself in the second i am the one who watches snow enters the world like a correction erasing the knowledge of the city the wind is a librarian without a face reshelving my footprints into white i lift my collar as if that small gesture could keep the infinite from knowing me a mirror of ice invents a second self and both answer when no one calls i have been many i will be many the storms repeat their careful arguments when the blizzard finally loosens its grip the city returns pretending it was always here so does the self a familiar fiction written each night in ink that vanishes -Gerhard Oevermann 2025
its the commuters with their eyes dead ahead as if the rest of us are traffic cones its the guy in the suit who treats the sidewalk like a ladder and your body like a rung its the woman with the designer bag who snaps at a cashier like kindness is for people with time its the bro at the bar talking over everyone because his voice is the only god he recognizes its the neighbor who waves then reports you its your boss who smiles and stabs with deadlines then calls it teamwork meaning do more for less and be grateful its the couple who send food back again and again not because its wrong because they like watching someone shrink its the landlord saying market value meaning greed its the parent at pickup parking in the fire lane because rules are for other peoples emergencies its the guy who tells you youre too sensitive with the comfort of someone who has never been required to imagine a second mind its the friend who says call me anytime then ghosts you the moment your voice cracks its the social media saint posting empathy like a coupon while stepping on every hand that reaches up most of them arent villains theyre worse theyre comfortable they dont wake up plotting they wake up centered and stay that way all day they want service without seeing the server they want silence and call it peace they want the world to be smooth and call it normal they keep their lives clean by throwing the mess into other people and when you point at it they blink like you spoke in a language they never bothered to learn then they laugh or they shrug or they say thats just how it is and thats the rot thats the song the easy anthem of the crowd so you do the one hard thing you refuse the sleep you look at people like they are real even when they dont you dont reward the clueless with your silence you dont turn your own heart into a closed store because if you join them its finished and if you dont at least one person in this loud stupid day gets to feel seen
See How They Shine the shovel bites then stops as if the ground has found a nerve and canā€™t bear to touch it again everyone stands like composure is something you can borrow like grief is a room with exits I hate how quickly people turn into manners how they hand soft phrases like gauze for a missing limb I watch the first clod fall too ordinary for the end of you but thereā€™s no shame in it thereā€™s just dirt and time doing what they do and me trying to act like Iā€™m not an animal with my nose to the ground someday years from now I will dig up your bones to see how they shine