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As She Takes it All
Posted: 07 August 2007
Word Count: 61
Summary: Here goes
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Watch the leaftower, gentle against the black night.
Watch the seagull, down-feathers fluffed against the cold.
Watch the warding light, rotating from sea to land to cloud,
to me, as it searches lackadaisically for the strolling world.
The grass bends with the wind.
Wet rocks under the moonlight.
And a silent boredom on her face
as she takes it all in.
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 Tina at 12:06 on 10 August 2007
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Hello Jordan
I think everyone is sunbathing! Not much activity here anyway.
Can you clarify a few things before I say anymore about your poem?
What is a warding light? DO you mean warning light?
And - what's a leaftower?
There is a nice slow energy about this and I enjoyed reading but want to say more
I will wait for your post
Tina
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Tina at 10:57 on 11 August 2007
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It is that amazing phenomenon to Uk residends known as, 'sunshine' a rare thing to be adored when ever it appeasrs so as I said before I guess they are all sunbathing!
Now about your poem - I really like this bit
The grass bends with the wind.
Wet rocks under the moonlight.
And a silent boredom on her face
as she takes it all in.
but not so sure about the beginning - like the repetition but think that 'lackadaisically' is just too long a word for this line as it interrupts the flow. But hey, that's just my opinion. Its all so subjective isn't it?
Anyway I liked reading
thanks
Tina
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 James Graham at 14:06 on 11 August 2007
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A leaftower is a tree. Never heard them called that before, but why not? We're poets, we give things new identities.
Possibly 'lackadaisically' is too clumsy, but otherwise the language is effectively simple and the rhythm flows well in long, kind of slow-breathing lines. Where the lines are shorter, you double-space, which has a similar effect. The repeated 'Watch' helps too. The whole thing is at walking pace, which suits the tempo of what's being observed.
Each of the things the speaker tells himself to 'watch', and invites us to watch too inside our heads, is much more interesting than boring. To put it a little more strongly, the tree, bird, lighthouse (which seems in an odd sort of way a natural thing) grass and rocks are some of the wonders of the world.
But...Watch? 'she' says. May as well watch paint dry. I felt at first that I wanted more detail as to who 'she' is, but after a while it began to seem ok to leave her almost anonymous. She is someone who would be bored by things that don't move at a 21st century pace. She would be more excited, perhaps, by the world as seen on a screen than by the real world seen with the naked eye. I think of trailers for TV dramas, for example, which cut at top speed from somebody pointing a gun to somebody jumping out of a burning building to somebody saying 'There's nowhere to run to', etc. etc. Although we don't know who 'she' is, we know what she represents.
'She takes it all in' must be ironic - especially with the title being 'As she takes it all' which isn't quite the same, more passive. In the title, she 'takes it' presumably because she has nothing else to do; 'takes it in' is closer to what the imaginative observer (the poem's speaker) does. But in her case it's ironic - she takes it in, then it evaporates and is forgotten.
James.
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