This was taken from my phone a few days ago. I didn’t expect it to come out well so hadn’t got around to downloading it.
Sadly, it isn’t really clear enough to see how the colours created the illusion of bands of flowers on the mountain.
Rainbow
paints the hillside
heather; blue grass; gorse
I’ve no time at the moment to write what I want to about geographical limits to poetry and how far we should dumb down for our (international) readers – a follow on from my doubts and the comments about gossamer.
So instead, I’ve dug out the piece I wrote as a response to the usenet challenge to write a poem including the words – love / soul (or spirit) / insane / shard / tendril / darkness – or variations from the same roots (e.g. as ‘insanity’). It’s an old piece and it’s not the best poem I’ve ever written. Even so, I admit to being fond of it, and of Aunt Emmeline.
Continue reading “forbidden words II”
When I posted the poem returning, a while back, I’ll admit that it wasn’t because I think it’s particularly good. It just seemed to suit the mood and the weather.
One of the problems I see with it is the “poesy”: the self-conscious and unnecessary use of poetic words. I think that including the word gossamer and the phrase in her wake is pretty much unforgivable in so short a piece. The latter could easily be replaced by behind her without losing any of the meaning. After all, whoever “she” is, she’s almost certainly not a boat.
Continue reading “forbidden words”
she walks through fields of silver.
Winter cracks under her feet
and the earth breathes
gossamer. In her wake,
the path is damp
and green.
Yes, it’s a bit soon to be thinking of spring. But the rain has at least paused for a day or two; yesterday there was a rainbow, and today, after a slight frost, we have tenuous sunshine, so it’s hard not to feel a little more optimistic.
On rainy nights the streets
are twice as bright. Light runs
in rivulets down pavements, streams
along gutters, swirling into storm drains, drips
from balconies and falls, dimpling
puddles.
(This is really only a true observation where there are streets with cars and street lights. Out here in the middle of nowhere, it seems to have been raining constantly for as long as I can remember, and there are no such cheerful lights to be mirrored and multiplied. Country living does, of course, have other compensations, but at the moment my mind is too waterlogged to think of them.)
don't confuse the narrator 