Trying to catch up, trying to write. Any thoughts at all are appreciated. Many thanks and hello
And then the discovery that to keep going is the thing itself.
The sun spreads out over
morning buildings.
Yesterday was the kind of day
where the moon showed up
in the afternoon
and made friends with the clouds,
so that a translucent strip of gauze
ran across its cheese-pie face.
All day we were identifying
the major world continents in loosely
formed bodies of air that shifted
between the greater ruling powers of earth,
and caused a stir in the park
when Russia covered up the sun
for a whole 5 minutes.
Oh these days, when
the manifestations of summer
saturate everything so that the moon
was just a beautiful pale rock
floating like a fingernail in the sky.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I'm fond of cloud poems to begin with, but this one is especially nice. Some nit-picky stuff:
made friends with the clouds seems too trite.
Maybe "made nice to" or some other phrase?
Love the second stanza as a whole, but I want a full comparison when you say,
"between the greater ruling powers of earth," [and what else?]
i think there is a very lovely poem here in the 2nd stanza. also i like the concept of "morning buildings", that they are different from buildings in the afternoon, and i know what you mean, but really i would cut both the 1st and 3rd stanza and leave morning buildings for another poem. in something so short, it is confusing to shift between today and yesterday - i don't understand a difference that matters between them. also i feel there is some confusion with the moon, which i imagine to be full from the imagery in the 1st stanza, and very scant from the final image. but i love the 2nd stanza, and the idea of ending a short poem with "for a whole 5 minutes".
I love reading this poem and thinking that the "we" in the second stanza is you and the moon!
I agree that there is something very captivating in the second stanza that would benefit from expansion:
I think the statement "between the greater ruling powers of the earth" admits some confusion: on first reading, I too expected another half of the comparison (an "[and what else]"). Even after I realized that you meant shifts between several ruling powers, I still see an opening for expansion here that I hope you don't pass up!
I like the last stanza's "manifestations of summer/saturate . . . a beautiful pale rock", and I think this stanza could be tweaked/trimmed into a good piece of supporting evidence for the shiftings described in stanza two, but I'm confused about the "was" in the penultimate line. . . the inner logic of the poem seems to suggest that that would should be something closer to "isn't" . . .
was this helpful?
Post a Comment