The Leaf Dance
The brown leaves rustle in the wind,
slowly crawling along the trail,
beckoning us to follow them.
“Fall is in the air.” Chimneys send
off'rings of scents into the pale
Autumn sky as the light grows dim.
Your shins flash in the dusk as you
expose your calves, lifting your skirt
and dancing through the crunching
leaves.
I take your hand and pull you to
me, stealing a kiss as you flirt
away into the falling eve.
I chase after, pulled in no small part
by the cords that bind our hearts.copyright 2015
** ** **
I'm not going to offer much in the way of explanation for this. I will say only two things:
1. Fall is my wife's favorite season.
2. She loves, with a child's delight, to step on crispy, fallen leaves.
So this is for my wife.
Because I love her.
Andrew's sweet side revealed like shins flashing in the dusk. Wasn't this a nice gesture for your wife.
ReplyDeleteArlee Bird
Wrote By Rote
Lee: What? I have no sweet side! One side is bitter; one side is sour. That's all!
DeleteSounds like somebody has a crush on his wife :)
ReplyDeleteJeanne: Not bad after nearly 20 years, huh?
DeleteYou're a hopeless romantic. About the only criticism I have of this is that it doesn't seem to be in iambic pentameter which if I remember my 10th grade English correctly sonnets have to be? But maybe they don't. Whatever. It does deal with nature which sonnets are also supposed to do.
ReplyDeleteIt's really good. I read it a few times through. I like the way the words flow and seem to pull the reader through -- each sentence seems to sort of blend into the next. I think that's in part the rhyme scheme. That's why I read it a couple times: once pausing at the end of each line, once reading it through in the way the sentences scan.
You should write more poems.
I didn't know you wrote poetry.
Briane: Yes, sonnets are "typically" written in iambic pentameter, but I am horrible with meter, so I tend to ignore that. It's not a requirement, though, and many more modern sonnets stray away from it.
DeleteNature, though, is unrelated to sonnets; that's haiku. Sonnets can be about whatever, although English sonnets (Shakespearean) are more traditionally about love.
Mine are neither English nor Italian.
I write poetry occasionally. I think it's good exercise. Typically, though, they take a lot of work, and I have many that I have started and will never finish.
I do write to sentence structure. Mostly. Why use any punctuation at all if it doesn't mean anything within the work?
When I write, I give a lot of thought to sentence structure and where the words are on the page (which is sort of hard to do in the e-reading era, what with screen sizes and font changes). I think poetry pays more attention to things like that than prose.
ReplyDeleteI don't worry too much about whether meter is "right". I like the challenge of writing in rhyme and meter sometimes. I always think of the story my English teacher told me (which may or may not be true) that Ezra Pound wrote a traditional sonnet every day for a year to learn to write in that strict style, then burned them all and went on with his life. So there's something to be said for forcing your words into that type of tight constraint. Kind of like how writing short-short stories with word limits taught me to edit.
Either way it's a really good poem. You should do more.
Briane: I have more. Maybe I'll post some of them. I'll have to look through them.
DeleteVery sweet. I can hardly believe fall's almost over.
ReplyDeleteTAS: I know! I can't believe the year is almost over!
Delete2015 has been... interesting.
DeleteTAS: You don't know the half of it.
DeleteLovely that you wrote your wife a poem. Wise lady to love fall. :D
ReplyDeleteShannon: She is wise.
Delete