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Blizzard '26
Each spring,
***When notes of old and oiled colors seen
Around the globes of tree tops, red and green
***And pink, make seeming old with newness sheen;
A waiting moment with a birdsong gleans
***The lilting echo where your sigh had been.
And in the summer come the sands, delayed,
***Now clapping at the shore with hearth hand, clayed
And soft and sweet; with open doors displayed,
***The house fronts on the hilltops stand arrayed
Like celery, and spurn the dead you made.
Reminder of an end to victory,
***The pink and orange--less perfunctory
Than spring's, and less fecund this tertiary--
***"Know, all things pass," says fall, and faithfully
I yield, to not be contradictory.
Prepare for you, I tell myself instead--
***For heavy drift that thumps and pumps the dead
With snow; and white and black and yellow dread
***That asks aloud if really life has fled
Or if
***A kind of cancer.
On a pale-cast night, the moon above you
***Hangs, of gold, and rounded, clear of ague
As its stars are specks.
The cold by sinew
***Reaches me: "By poverty continue--sometimes"
--Says your moon, in lambent purview.
***When notes of old and oiled colors seen
Around the globes of tree tops, red and green
***And pink, make seeming old with newness sheen;
A waiting moment with a birdsong gleans
***The lilting echo where your sigh had been.
And in the summer come the sands, delayed,
***Now clapping at the shore with hearth hand, clayed
And soft and sweet; with open doors displayed,
***The house fronts on the hilltops stand arrayed
Like celery, and spurn the dead you made.
Reminder of an end to victory,
***The pink and orange--less perfunctory
Than spring's, and less fecund this tertiary--
***"Know, all things pass," says fall, and faithfully
I yield, to not be contradictory.
Prepare for you, I tell myself instead--
***For heavy drift that thumps and pumps the dead
With snow; and white and black and yellow dread
***That asks aloud if really life has fled
Or if
***A kind of cancer.
On a pale-cast night, the moon above you
***Hangs, of gold, and rounded, clear of ague
As its stars are specks.
The cold by sinew
***Reaches me: "By poverty continue--sometimes"
--Says your moon, in lambent purview.
The internet black hole ate my comment on this, and I don't remember all of what I said, so I'll try again.
The rhyme of "been" identifies the writer as likely British... and the "s" on the end of gleans kinda breaks that rhyme. The rhythm mostly works, but if possible it's good to avoid words like "orange" and "tertiary" that can be pronounced different ways with different syllable counts. I had to read back over that a couple times to make it fit.
The start seems to be a similar theme to two of the others, where there's still life under the snow that will emerge again in spring, but then it sounds kind of bleak at the end. Yet I can't put my finger on exactly why, since I didn't understand it once the stanza structure started to change. The way you describe the "arrayed" house fronts on a hill (just the fronts, not the whole building, leaving a flat image in my mind) and liken them to something much smaller, celery, puts me in a mind of gravestones, particularly with the mention of death there. If that was intentional, it's subtle, but it worked well.
I wish I got the ending better, but it has a nice atmosphere.
The rhyme of "been" identifies the writer as likely British... and the "s" on the end of gleans kinda breaks that rhyme. The rhythm mostly works, but if possible it's good to avoid words like "orange" and "tertiary" that can be pronounced different ways with different syllable counts. I had to read back over that a couple times to make it fit.
The start seems to be a similar theme to two of the others, where there's still life under the snow that will emerge again in spring, but then it sounds kind of bleak at the end. Yet I can't put my finger on exactly why, since I didn't understand it once the stanza structure started to change. The way you describe the "arrayed" house fronts on a hill (just the fronts, not the whole building, leaving a flat image in my mind) and liken them to something much smaller, celery, puts me in a mind of gravestones, particularly with the mention of death there. If that was intentional, it's subtle, but it worked well.
I wish I got the ending better, but it has a nice atmosphere.
>>Pascoite
Hmm, I'm New English, but I thought the rhyme was OK.
I suppose, rather than looking forward to the spring, I was thinking more about how the thought of winter colors the other seasons of the year, or puts a limit on them. Winter, then, represents a special kind of encounter. I wanted to have the last stanza (it was one stanza, once) be written in a trochaic rhythm, to convey a difference of feeling; but the cheapness of it was apparent, and the bread crumbled as it came out of the oven.
Hmm, I'm New English, but I thought the rhyme was OK.
I suppose, rather than looking forward to the spring, I was thinking more about how the thought of winter colors the other seasons of the year, or puts a limit on them. Winter, then, represents a special kind of encounter. I wanted to have the last stanza (it was one stanza, once) be written in a trochaic rhythm, to convey a difference of feeling; but the cheapness of it was apparent, and the bread crumbled as it came out of the oven.