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River
Posted: 25 March 2006
Word Count: 398
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I am not made for this you cried
as children fell from your milky thighs
Let the things perish and I will fly unknown unsown
my bones may crack and snap
the worms can have my eyes but
I am not made for this you cried
In truth
the slate and mist have greyed you
the bracken burn of summer decayed you
In truth
you tread through thorns
a warm whiskey shawl
your lantern and map
It once was your way, mind you, yes.
This here, or there.
Things stayed.
No room for the flap or mess of us.
But you loved.
Loved the wrap of cats around your ankles,
the saplings you earthed,
the river the fields the plump summer berries
the stuff of other life, of other birth.
We grab your soft bosom under your nightgown
all lemon soap, scented orange plugged with cloves.
Your eiderdown of lovely lies.
The sweets we stole on Christmas Eve.
We believed.
In the cool of that room you're still,
as pale as frost and colder.
There are no soft webs to catch
the tiny blades of ice that shoot from me.
Beside your mouth there's no whisper
no foggy breath
no updown inout from your chest.
It's the quiet that might be peace but
I don't know that yet.
I wait for your eyes to open.
I could wait forever because
this is forever, this is the only forever.
Turn away from the green
the day is fading.
Our small feet stumble.
Ha. The chaffinch and the wagtail keep
bobbing for a penny.
Waterflies dip the wet fracture.
The heron swings.
Mud gathers in grooves
in the leaves in your eyes.
On earth as it is
This day is done.
Turn away from the green.
It was just so
suddenly the air was soft mown grass
although the tower blocks the shouting and the dogs
held the evening ugly.
A smile pulled my face and then
I stepped into an afternoon and we were there
beside the hawthorn and warm cow parsley.
I saw you leap the gate. I saw you
leave your shoes and run through thistles in the cowpat field
the sun and you and birdsong in me.
These are not my feet walking
this is not my mouth speaking
this is not my shadow, my shiver.
I am in the fields with you, by the river.
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Comments by other Members
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 Elsie at 17:29 on 22 April 2006
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Hi Swoo - I've just found this. There are so many lovely things about it. I wonder why nobody commented - was it posted in a group? Perhaps because it's a lot to take in, being a sequence. Sometimes people are busy and things get missed in the general archive. Some bits especially I liked:
| Your eiderdown of lovely lies |
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| The wrap of cats around your ankles |
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and more..
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 James Graham at 19:16 on 30 April 2006
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Hello again, Swoo. These poems make a strong immediate impact - the language is often sensuous and evocative, as in the second one:
Loved the wrap of cats around your ankles,
the saplings you earthed,
the river the fields the plump summer berries
the stuff of other life, of other birth.
We grab your soft bosom under your nightgown
all lemon soap, scented orange plugged with cloves. |
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There are plenty of examples of that kind of adventurous turn of language that brings poetry to life, words and phrases that take us by surprise but which we soon come to realise are perfectly fitting:
In truth
you tread through thorns
a warm whiskey shawl
your lantern and map |
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Ha. The chaffinch and the wagtail keep
bobbing for a penny.
Waterflies dip the wet fracture. |
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| the sun and you and birdsong in me |
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Some of the poems are possibly stronger than others - I'd choose the second and fifth; other readers might choose differently - but each has its own quality. The last poem is very fine, and the last four lines of it have a quality that all the best poetry has - you feel that even after many readings they would still be fresh and alive; and that on different readings the meaning of these lines (and of the whole poem) would come at you in different ways.
I think you need to give us an idea of the source of each poem - identify the people portrayed in the first two, who is mourned in three and four, who is remembered in five. Readers will quickly be aware that they're all different people, but would feel more connected to the poems knowing a little more about the subject of each.
You can do this through titles - but if titles don't come easily at this stage (as very often they don't) maybe you would identify the sources of the poems just as a posted comment. I think the poems will eventually need identifying titles, though.
Maybe you need a different general title too. The river hardly features in any of the poems except the last. (Briefly in the second.) This isn't really a series of poems associated with a river - except that I can see the last poem, in which the river features, being the most affirmative and therefore perhaps justifying the title. They're all poems about loss; could there be a general title that conveyed that idea indirectly? A time image - passing time, seasonal change?
James.
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 Swoo at 16:01 on 01 May 2006
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Thanks James and Elsie.
These are a sequence of poems that don't really belong together as such, but I stitched them together for an assignment - I will now unstitch them!
You're right about about the collective title being inappropriate, james - the last one was tentatively called River, then Shiver, then just Blank. :-)
They are all, miserably enough, about losing different people, and as such should perhaps have names attached to them? I don't know. I like the seasons idea, James, I will ponder upon it.
The (real) people in them: 1 is my mother, 2 is a beloved aunt, 3 and 5 are my dad, with a funeral (4) thrown in for good measure.
Cheerful stuff!
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