The exercise:
Write about: droplets.
Max has an amazing excess of energy these days. You'd think he'd grown used to running around in circles and chasing after people for hours at a time or something.
We took him to the park after running some errands in town this morning and... yeah. We might want to reverse that order next time.
The most time consuming items to harvest for box day were collected this evening, so hopefully that will make for a quicker morning tomorrow. Fingers crossed, anyway.
Mine:
There is a droplet dangling
From your fingertip, my dear.
It seems to be frozen there,
As though in fear.
Is it rain, perspiration,
A single lonesome tear?
No, none of those, none of those...
It is simply your blood, my dear.
5 comments:
Heh, but you don't want to wear him out at the park too much before you run the errands or he'll be tired and not wanting to do them with you! I think you might have a bit of a catch-22 there :)
Your poem turns quite eloquently dark towards the end, and while it's not exactly sinister, it certainly leaves the reader wondering how much is unsaid! I wonder if you actually need the "It is" in the last line as well? I think it flows slightly better without it, but feel free to correct me!
Well done on all the comments as well! I hope you had fun reading them.
Droplets
Droplets was the name given to the farm; burned into a large wooden shingle that hung on the wall at the entrance to the farmyard. The farmyard itself was set at the edge of a cliff so that anyone incautuious enough to step out of the farmhouse's back door would have a single stone step on which to regret their decision, and then a fall over over eight hundred feet to a sandy beach below. When he was drunk, which was most mornings as he would wake at three and drink to forget his nightmares, John Clarke the principal farmhand would mutter that the name of the farm was a prediction: that it would only droplets of rain to push it over the edge itself. As it was raining heavily when Stella arrived at Droplets, and continued to rain for most of the days she was there, she disbelieved him the moment he put this suggestion forth.
She arrived clinging to the back of a produce truck whose driver had stopped to help when her car had broken down in a runnel by the side of a narrow country road. He had offered to let her sit in the truck itself, but the front seat was occupied by two growling alsatians, and the truck body was refrigerated, so she'd bitten down hard on her collection of journalistic swearwords and clung on as tenaciously as old ivy. The journey had been cold and wet and her fingers were blue and claw-hooked when she arrived, but she still surveyed the farmyard with the eyes of someone who thought they were a Jane Austen heroine.
She was quite dismayed to see that the farmyard, though inevitably muddy in places, was well-swept and tidy; rope neatly coiled on hooks, bales of straw stacked carefully against walls and under shelter, and an old but serviceable flat-bed truck parked up near the house. As she sighed, unable to think of anything to improve, the front door opened and old Benedict came out to greet her.
He greeted the produce truck, the cataracts in his eyes being so bad that everything was seen as though in thick fog, and when corrected of his misapprehension he smiled and hugged the produce man. Stella sighed again and walked inside, leaving the man who was probably her maternal grandfather to his misty confusion.
"I saw something nasty in the water closet," said a small, lugubrious child as she walked past it. She paused, wondering if she should be able to determine its sex, but the swaddled clothing and its extreme youth made it impossible for her to guess.
"I saw something nasty in the linen cupboard," said a young girl, dressed a maid, walking past.
"I saw something nasty clinging to the back of the produce truck," said the produce man, who'd come in behind her leading Benedict by the hand, and Stella whirled around, spraying water droplets everywhere, to berate him.
Drip, drop
Running
Off my
Pen
Letting my
Eyes fill with
Tears unobserved,
Sitting in the rain.
By the way, if you'd like to read more about Droplets, I continued it a little further here
The amber colored sky reflected off the leaves, tinting the green gold in the fading autumn light. The calm before the storm, it was so beautiful in its short-lived serenity. Its fragility was the true treasure.
Just like life.
I remembered a time when I feared the frail quality life had. After seeing so much life fade away, washed in blood and evaporate like dew on leaves before my very eyes, I dreaded how short life could be. Fate was cruel in this singular way, giving us the ultimate gift and then taking it away before we fully grew to appreciate what we had and experience it all to the fullest.
From the other side of the clearing, I saw the approaching accumulation of light; my father’s army. I saw the life of the Renterrans shining through the trees. From my distance, I couldn’t tell which would survive the day and which had reached the end of their time.
The first drop of rain landed on the bridge of my nose. It slowly ran down and landed in my left eye. Fate’s assurance that my gift, my plague for most of my life, was given to me for a reason. It was in Her plan all along that I would aid Candra and betray Renterra. And just in case I started to doubt Her plan again, another drop fell into my right eye.
The light of Renterran lives grew closer as more and more water droplets began to fall around me. If only it was just rain that would fall this day.
Greg - yeah, we're screwed either way, aren't we? And I think you're quite right about dropping the 'It is' from the final line.
Fascinating setting you've created there, and I'm so pleased you've expanded it on your blog - I look forward to reading the rest there shortly.
Morganna - that's a lovely acrostic. Really nice work, as usual.
Ivybennet - love your opening description. Also really enjoy this glimpses into this world of yours that you've been sharing with us :)
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