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Mourning October [Poetry]
The Crowing One
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
It has been a short while, though I have been writing. I wanted to share, as this has seen a few revisions and could use a pass-over from eyes that aren't mine.
Revision 10/31/10:
Mourning October
I.
Speak the whisper of stones, of morning-breath freezing about birch-trunks.
It was cold in August: my fingers played at the candor in your cascading hair. And you said I was “fine” by the standard of sea-care. Adrift? no, but drifting certainly
toward a certainty. Waves from somewhere crashing around our feet.
Before the end of day we watched the sky pulse gradient without light. The lack of color alarming: it and you and me together, under the hood of some ornamental star
and we were indistinguishable from ash and snow.
Under rock. Above sea-salt. There are places in this world filled with joy and we cannot find them.
II.
Two songs intertwined; four legs measuring gaits of varying length;
your eyes and my mouth so close never meeting.
The ash dissipated as we turned our backs to the earth, we forced ourselves toward frozen light.
Me and you and it were lost, becoming birch-song and stone-gaze.
10/15/10 Draft:
Revision 10/31/10:
Mourning October
I.
Speak the whisper of stones, of morning-breath freezing about birch-trunks.
It was cold in August: my fingers played at the candor in your cascading hair. And you said I was “fine” by the standard of sea-care. Adrift? no, but drifting certainly
toward a certainty. Waves from somewhere crashing around our feet.
Before the end of day we watched the sky pulse gradient without light. The lack of color alarming: it and you and me together, under the hood of some ornamental star
and we were indistinguishable from ash and snow.
Under rock. Above sea-salt. There are places in this world filled with joy and we cannot find them.
II.
Two songs intertwined; four legs measuring gaits of varying length;
your eyes and my mouth so close never meeting.
The ash dissipated as we turned our backs to the earth, we forced ourselves toward frozen light.
Me and you and it were lost, becoming birch-song and stone-gaze.
10/15/10 Draft:
Spoiler:
The Crowing One on
Posts
I like that line as an ending. I don't think you need the line that follows, especially since it's repeating images already built into the poem itself. At least not the whole line; I really don't like how it begins.
Suggestion because of the abundance of "of" in the first line
"Tell me about a stone how it whispers, the morning breath freezing about your birch-trunks"
I like the play of language going on inside the poem. "but drifting / toward a certainly", "indistinguishable"
I don't know what to think of the "sky pulse gradient without light". I imagine the two characters in the poem in a car as the day ends. But I don't know what the pulse without light is all about.
Those three "of's" in the first line are damn near each other. Perhaps
It maintains the sort of impersonal humanistic character I'm always seeking, as well as my beloved imperative voice.
I'll go get some coffee and see if I can re-work some of this before any of my co-workers get in.
I do like that revision a bit better than the original. Not that I hated the original line or anything, but the abundance of "of" was distracting to me. I wonder if anyone else felt that. "Speak" is a better verb than "tell" no doubt.
"Roundabout. Reversal." is actually important, though perhaps not where it is.
I suspect a second section may be in order. Hm. "Two songs intertwined; four gaits of varying length" is far too good for me to scrap it. Back to the drawing board.
But you know the old adage, kill your babies.