The exercise:
On this final day of February, let us write about: delays.
Kat's flight was delayed by almost three hours - thankfully I knew about the first hour and a half before I left home. Luckily I brought a book with me that helped cover the other hour and a half.
You can find all the honeymoon pictures I posted on Facebook here.
Oh, actually, that's just the first 200. Because apparently there's a limit to how many pictures you can have in a Facebook album. So here's the rest.
Don't worry, there's only 14 more in there.
Mine:
Standing at the top of the cliff, looking straight down at the still pool a hundred feet below, Jimmy was feeling very annoyed. He looked over at his older brother and scowled.
"Why can't we just do it now?" he asked, the words sounding polite and patient in his ears.
"Because I said so," his brother replied. "And stop whining."
"I wasn't!"
"You still are."
Jimmy folded his arms across his chest and clamped his mouth shut. Looking away, he contemplated doing it right then, without his brother's permission. Like a real rebel.
"All right, get ready," his brother said. Jimmy's scowl disappeared in a heartbeat as he made his final preparations. "On three, okay?"
"Got it."
"One... two... three!"
In unison they threw their rocks straight down. They seemed to twist and turn forever before they finally landed with a thunderous splash, just as their sister and her friends arrived at the edge of the pool.
That's a lot of pictures! Thank goodness for digital cameras then I guess, or it'd be costing you a fortune to get all those rolls of film processed, and then you'd have to post them out to all us loyal blog readers to see. So... does Kat now think that your face is camera shaped? You must have spent a lot of the honeymoon hiding behind it!
ReplyDeleteYour dialogue is spot on in the story, it brings the characters ages out really nicely and unobtrusively. And the denouement is very tightly delivered too -- I think it's great.
Delays
Imarinen's hammer falls like Winter,
Making his presence known to all,
With solidity and breathtaking beauty,
Echoing throughout the hall.
But endless delays have chilled the metal,
What once glowed white is only red,
And the Sampo that Ilmarinen crafts,
Is already partly dead.
He cannot discard it, it won't be unmade,
It remains a trap for the weakest,
And Ilmarinen fires up the forge again,
For Winter is at his bleakest.
Greg - in response to your question, Kat said: 'Well, actually...'
ReplyDelete:P
Lovely poem. But you know I'm a big fan of your mythological poems.
Also, having just read up on Ilmarinen and the Sampo, that's a story that really captures my imagination.
Heh, well I've just started reading the Kalevale, so there might be a little bit of a Finnish flavour to my mythological poems for a while. There's certainly some good mythology up there in the frozen North though!
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm not at all surprised that Kat agreed with me :-P