The exercise:
The prompt on this last day of May: the hourglass.
I'm getting married in exactly two months.
That has nothing to do with the poem I wrote, but it seemed like something worth mentioning.
Mine:
I hear each grain of sand
As it falls through stale air;
I say I'm not worried,
But you know that I'm scared.
I just want to freeze time,
To make this moment last;
But the sand keeps flowing,
Now I'm stuck in the past.
My present is too tense,
My future too unknown;
If I can't find answers,
I'll find myself alone.
You've picked a great date for the wedding I think, perhaps even the tropical rain forest that is Vancouver will manage some sunshine for you! Have you said where the wedding is happening?
ReplyDeleteI really like the first two verses of your poem, and the third is a workmanlike finish -- and I think that's kind of the problem for me, I know you can do better :) The first two lines seem a little hackneyed, almost. That is quite balanced by the first two lines though, which are excellent. (Oh, and I think you've got a typo in aire in the second line.)
The hourglass
I'm never more aware of time
Than when the sands slither,
rustle, drip and glide
Through the neck of the hourglass.
How apposite, that this constriction
Should momentarily hold each grain
and freeze an instant of my life.
How thankful can I be,
That when things go wrong,
So horribly, horribly wrong,
I can turn the hourglass over,
Watch the grains bounce and tumble
Back the way they came, undoing
What the Fates decreed should be done.
The price I pay?
Mere stagnation,
My creativity held at bay,
Imprisoned in the hourglass
I have made my life.
The hourglass, eh? A theme most appropriate on my end: I only have seven class days of high school (six if you discount the day of the senior trip), and graduation is just two days shy of four weeks away. This kind of freaks me out.
ReplyDeleteThis whole concept that my class is graduating, that we're going off to different places, that we're all scattering in almost a hundred different directions, we who'd formed a similar unit for, what, about twelve years? It's a kind of startling concept.
Sure, I could wish time would go slower, but that'd just make it go faster. The year's sped away enough as it is, and flipped out as I am I think it's good for us to go on, to keep going. Who knows, it might be like an hourglass itself: the sand slips through and separates, but there's a chance that grains formerly together settle back next to some familiar grains.
sand trickles down
ReplyDeletetime passes by
one grain at a time
And: http://lizbethsgarden.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/dragon-land-iii/
ReplyDeleteGreg - ah, we'll be far from the tropical rain forest - we're doing it in Osoyoos :)
ReplyDeleteI have no idea how that 'e' got in there. Thanks for pointing that out.
I think your first four lines are my favorite :)
g2 - exciting times! And I love the ending you crafted :)
Morganna - short and simple and I like it. And you spoil me with more dragons! :)