There is no time of the day, today.
No time. No day,. Just a sun
pasted to a thick backdrop of cloud,
whose bulbous rain flowers blackly.
There is a breeze, the stillest flutter
ruffles trees like they were children.
Children play in the garden, an echo
of laughter drowned by gulls lost inland.
I doodle figures of eight on an empty page.
ruffles trees like they were children.
Lovely tenderness in the line Dave. The echo in the garden triggered a thought of Eliot’s Burnt Norton. As usual, I appreciate your venture with words, though at this stage have not drawn out any overall meaning. Will ponder… The figure eight had me picturing the sign for infinity. The Eliot reference also made me think of how we experience time. A sense of being in timelessness or time not netted by the maths of the clock. The bundling of past/present/future. Love the doodling close and that earlier notion of ‘flowering’ rain. In general, I got a melancholic mood with the clouds and insistence of gulls, the stillness before a thunderous downpour, the idling on a blank page. Of course, the measure of eight could have a personal significance, including a signifier of childhood /relationship years.
Phil
I like how this ends too, it fits the mood of the rest of the poem. For me there were adjectives that seemed to be trying to overachieve a visual, like bulbous rain , stillest flutter, flowers blackly. Not to say don’t use them but for a reader like me I can’t make a mental picture of what they mean and it stops me to reread and that breaks the mood of the poem. But the ending, spot on.
Just a sun
pasted to a thick backdrop of cloud
bulbous rain flowers blackly
a breeze
ruffles trees
Children play in the garden, an echo
of laughter drowned by gulls lost inland.
I doodle figures of eight on an empty page.
This is the poem for me Dave.
Thanks Tom, excellent comments and well worth playing around with. And your perceptive cuts too David. Plenty to consider. Exactly what I was looking for