Carl Scharwath, has appeared globally with 180+ journals selecting his writing or art. Carl has published four poetry books and his latest book is “The World Went Dark,” published by Alien Buddha Press. Carl has four photography books, published with Praxis and CreatiVingenuitiy. His photography was exhibited in the Mount Dora and Leesburg Centers for the Arts. Carl is currently an art editor at Glitterati and former editor for Minute Magazine. He was nominated with four The Best of the Net Awards (2022-25) and two different 2023 Pushcart Nominations for poetry and a short story.

Hope

A flicker in the dark,
soft as breath,
whispers to the heart—
not yet.
Even in shadows,
light remembers
the way
home.

Transcendence

Rebellious sounds evade the mind.
Nymphs seducing on sailing Zephyr winds.
A steadfast melody
Thunders a battle cry
In heavens literary wars
The mystical world and a belief
In the supernatural praise the
Common man
As flying buttresses, machinery and
Technology give rise to will power.
And consciousness.
A lonely poet brings the past to the present
Romanticism defeated in Modernism
Syntactic rivers flow from ideas
As William Blake’s songs
Stand silent in a Poetry Slam

Memory Basin

Deep within the folds of existence, tucked far beyond where reality and dreams brush

against one another, there exists a place known only to a few — a hidden realm that dances

between the known and the unspoken. It is neither here nor there, yet it feels achingly familiar,

like the whisper of a forgotten melody.

There is a lake in my memory, timeless and waiting, nestled in the heart of a forest that

has long since faded from my conscious mind. I can't remember how old I was when I first saw

it but it exits there, waiting for me, as if it never belonged to any time at all. The lake, a perfect

mirror, never changes, a surface as smooth as glass, reflecting the sky so vividly that on

certain days you couldn't tell where the water ends, and the heavens begin.

In the distance, there is a river, but its waters don’t flow like those in the outside world.

It seems to move both backward and forward in time, the surface reflecting moments that I

might have lived or could one day live. As I sat by the riverbank, feeling the presence of old

companions, ones you’ve never truly met but have always known. They appear as shadows, or

perhaps echoes, barely visible at the edges of your vision. They don’t speak in words, but their

silence is full of meaning. It’s as though they are waiting, watching over you, but never

intruding.

In my memory, the lake was a place of solace. I would sit at the edge, knees pulled to

my chest, staring into the water, which held no secrets. The sunlight would dance across the

surface, turning the water into liquid gold at sunset, while the sky above transitioned from soft

pink to deep violet. I would lose hours there, feeling the quiet weight of the world lifting from
my

shoulders.

Time spent at the lake is not measured in minutes or hours but in heartbeats. When I

leave—and I always must leave—it is never with sadness. The memory lake remains with me,

tucked into the quiet spaces of the mind, ready to be called upon when the noise of the world

becomes too loud.

Though the lake may only live in my memory now, it still feels real. It’s a place I can

return to whenever life pulls too hard, or the world grows too loud. There, in the stillness, I

can find peace. The Lake of Echoes remains unchanged, a perfect reflection of a time when

everything was simpler, and all you needed to do was listen to the soft, gentle whispers of the

water.