Walk the rails under a high blue sky. Find the sag in the leaning fence, and step--carefully--over rusted wire. Follow a peninsula of blond grasses through a lake of loam, and come, at last, to the timber's edge where gray branches trace the sky and rose hips curl near purple canes.
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Summer Carol
Struggling to pluck
the maple seedling
with clumsy gloves
damp from earth
and weeds, I brush
a pine shrub's branch
and smell, suddenly,
Christmas.
Very nicely done. You put us there, in the scene. And there are nice touches of sound (Christmas ornaments?): the short u-sounds in "clumsy gloves," the consonantal echoes in "brush" and "branch" ...
This one has some wonderful repetitions of sound; the several short "u"s (in pluck, clumsy, glove, shrub, suddenly), there are the "b"s and "r"s in brush, shrub, branch along with the "r"s in struggling and earth and Christmas, the "s"s in smell, suddenly, Christmas as well as struggling, seedling, clumsy, gloves, weeds -- these all give a feeling of strong connection throughout the poem. Perfect title, too, of course!
Very nicely done. You put us there, in the scene. And there are nice touches of sound (Christmas ornaments?): the short u-sounds in "clumsy gloves," the consonantal echoes in "brush" and "branch" ...
ReplyDeleteThis one has some wonderful repetitions of sound; the several short "u"s (in pluck, clumsy, glove, shrub, suddenly), there are the "b"s and "r"s in brush, shrub, branch along with the "r"s in struggling and earth and Christmas, the "s"s in smell, suddenly, Christmas as well as struggling, seedling, clumsy, gloves, weeds -- these all give a feeling of strong connection throughout the poem. Perfect title, too, of course!
ReplyDelete