... Not often I concede defeat. I have jiggered about with this for hours and am off to bed feeling beaten. Guess some poems just need to be put back in the drawer and come to afresh... or not at all. I just hate wasting ideas. :))
SURREAL
Low-hanging branches, trunks of trees
are bathed one-sided in silvery light –
a Bethlehem of sorts.
Sweetly blinding, beams from
advancing Landrover’s lamps
bring scent of warm hay upon night breeze,
causing heavy-fleeced ewes to gather…
I remember a barn, another manger long ago
where cherubic children shared nascent kiss
and an innocent Mary moment.
Lights and sirens flash and blaze
on Top Road into town.
The rapture’s lost, the aura gone
and suddenly I’m Eve…
thinking in different time, another place
where life is hard on streets –
do angels there, shining in chaos,
also smell of grass?
That standalone third line is a shocker, it actually adds a lot of expectations. But then the next strophe transplants my narrator to something familiar "advancing Landrover’s lamps" and I can only agree with the gentleman who has mentioned about farm! I see a tense atmosphere, but then I am probably supposed to recreate it on my own and add characters in it. It reads like a painting, I won't call that surreal. I can perhaps get a grip in the last stanza again. To be blunt I will call this a poem of existentialism, with an isolatarian view. This work needs a BROADER canvas, and don't be afraid to add prose coz finer strokes are fine but they have their own limitations.
I think you got something here...and I think the angels Might just smell like "freshly cut grass" methinks.....nevermind when I start to think choas follow in their masses....lol!!
Thanks for all your support and encouragement, People!! :)) Pops, you are so right... I am always being told that I "cram" too much and should try instead to develop a thought more progressively through a piece to make it more palatable... that being said, I am therefore delighted that some of you take to it as is! But, you know me, overzealous to a fault! :)) Thankyooooooooooou xx
Good point, Kate; food for thought, indeed. I too like it as is, but think Felix may be right in his observation. I don't think poems are ever finished, any way. I have some written four, and five years ago, and once in a while something about them hits me; something I didn't see the first time, and there I go tweaking away.
I think you are onto something here indeed Kate, this is great enough to stand on it's own but...for what my opinion is worth I think when you pick it up again youshould continue the flow and let the stream meander a little bit more where you wanted to go.
Hugs,
Pops
Felix
The angels only smoke grass if it is "da Kind" Kate! LOL. This is a wonderful write, I think in your exhausted state, you were not seeing how well it flowed and how well you meshed the past with the times of today. Over 2000 years later and Bethlehem is a war zone, in many ways not so different from the danger that lurks in any major city or ghetto. Surreal, indeed, this is a powerful and excellent write. I just love it!!!!! =:0) I hope you are feeling better, stronger and that the pain is becoming somehow tollerable.
Take care,
Sherry
the prisitine pastoral environ where angels spawn, not only allow them to smell the grass but grow within it, even as the chaos of the hard streets beckon them from the distance surrounding them ... the imagery you have planted elegantly answers its own question ... great write, Kate ... crytpic yet cozy ...
it's your pre-poem comment that gives it away for me, Kate, my dear. give up in defeat??? good grief. you're jiggering resulted in one hell of a poem. I am amazed that this actually works so well, seeing as you've managed to carry the "natural" theme out and make it work on two levels and woven in the perfect biblical images. and then there's the light and shining stuff. may you be delivered to a peaceful place in dreams without weed. oh wait, one more thing, I absolutely think you pulled off the transition with the flashing lights and sirens blaring image. can you tell I love this poem???? peace and love, Dawn
Reviewed by Andy Turner (Reader)
Reviewed on November 5, 2005
Your farm girl background comes to the fore here.
Huh sometimes you have been my angel. So I guess some smell of grass.
No no kate not the smoking grass. Trust you to think of that.
Maybe the lights were from bonfire night!
Very clever farmyard analogies here.. Karrot Krunching Kate...
This book represents a thirty-day period of my poetry journal. Each poem addresses
the dominant thoughts occupying my mind during the early morning hours of a given
day.
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A thoughtprovoking post!
Calvin-n-Hobbes
stand on its own. I try and cram too Kate
and sometimes it is better to let it simmer. ;)
Love Tinka
Carmen :-)
Hugs,
Pops
Felix
Take care,
Sherry
Best regards,
Leland
Huh sometimes you have been my angel. So I guess some smell of grass.
No no kate not the smoking grass. Trust you to think of that.
Maybe the lights were from bonfire night!
Very clever farmyard analogies here.. Karrot Krunching Kate...