New poem – life collects…
Posted on Dec 11, 2012 in Blog feature, Recent Writing | 4 comments
Life collects, pools around you.
It paints its highlights,
Nothing there you can destroy
Or begin again.
Calm in aquamarine beauty,
Barely a hint of surf’s snowy trim.
Today the sea is out
But will come again.
For the moment,
On the beach,
My love and I,
Naked and blissful as can be.
In the soft, sun baked sand
History between my toes.
Sense how
Even the smooth stones ache
With stories of their own,
In the shuddering light of day.
Dear Scott: I enjoy your work. I love your opening line. Yet, as a response, there seems to be a rhythm that is off. I am not sure what it is without counting out syllables, or reading aloud for sibilance. I agree with you that readers and comments are very important to our work and that revision never seems to be done. Sometimes we decide we like our pieces the way they are. I am just beginning to read your work and am wondering if you would like to get more “out there” – nongrammatical, unchained by sentences, and outrageous. Just wondering. Marika
Scott says: Thanks very much for your thoughts, Marika. I’ve had a look at this and think you could well be right. To me the words flow OK, as the poem opens, but I think I may have oversimplified with line breaks and a break for a second stanza. I have now adjusted so that 7-5-7-5 syllable pattern to open the poem is more explicit and becomes more naturally musical again, as one stanza? Let me know what you think…
As for being more “out there” thanks for planting that seed in my mind and I will that carry with me for a while, when approaching new beginnings and see what happens!
God! How great you are! It’s wonderful!
Scott, let me try if this works after several failed attempts to post a comment. I think this one might be my favourite… History between the toes, as if I could hear the slumping geography
This poem is a reader’s delight. Loved the last stanza, esp. the lines ‘Even the smooth stones ache/With stories of their own,’
The metaphor here is deep and resonating..yet the poem is light in its sense….