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Monday, July 14, 2008

A Sunny Interlude

This morning as I stepped out of my car where I work, I heard a bellbird singing in the nearby tree. This small native bird is not very colourful, but it's song is as beautiful as it's name implies. I couldn't help stopping for a minute or two to listen. (You can listen too, if you find the link in the sidebar of the page I have linked above - however this short clip doesn't quite do it justice).

At lunchtime I drove between jobs, stopping at the bank on the way. The edges of the panes of glass in the front windows acted as prisms, casting rainbow stripes across the pavement.

The sunny day, warm for winter, was a welcome relief after the snow, biting wind and rain, and miserable greyness we were experiencing a week ago. Which made it hard for me to act on this week's prompt at readwritepoem, which was to write a poem "celebrating" the more miserable aspects of summer.

So, I bring you an old poem from my files - one of the earliest I wrote, at the height of summer, using the prompts "river" "ice" and "drought" - hence, a mix of seasons

Drought

Here where the winter rain
froze in the cracks
and pushed until the rocks came tumbling down

Here where the spring swollen river
woth the strength of young love
swept me off my feet
and I fell into the cold, sharp shock

Here now the river has grown old
lies shrunken in a stony bed
the brown grass withered on the banks
and the rocks feverish in the hot sun

9 comments:

Linda Jacobs said...

I love the swollen river being compared to young love! And the feverish rocks! Great poem!

Anonymous said...

Feverish rocks is a great phrase - nice work!

Anonymous said...

it's amazing how you only mention love once and yet it is powerful enough to consume (delightfully) my experience of the rest of the piece. love it!

Anonymous said...

You really get a sense from this of a specific place and these great forces moving through it -- lovely.

Jeff Fleming said...

Wow, that is a very solid poem. Great work, I love how you touch on all the seasons and use such wonderful description.

Thank you so much for sharing.

Andy Sewina said...

Yeah, I feel that this is a metaphor for life - dare I say that the first two stanzas were quite sexy?

Crafty Green Poet said...

I'm another fan of the feverish rocks. Lovely song of the bellbird too, it has a beautiful tone to its voice

Anonymous said...

This reminds me so much of July in New Mexico, before the August rainy season starts. Love it!

Anonymous said...

this is beautiful, truly beautiful. i really love the way this stays focused and grounded in natural observations, showing the same location in different seasons and from different points of view, while hinting about possible deeper meanings. so much said in so few words.