Pearls
She locks the door,
unlocks the door,
relocks the door.
She is in -
everyone is out.
She's afraid.
It's the glimpse of swallow's tail
flicked across the corner of a windscreen,
that golden thing
moving its slow thighs
through the desert to Bethlehem.
She's changed the locks three times,
changed partners,
raised a hedge of children,
read every book
on the power of the name -
but no name occurs to her.
Like a pearl in a bathtub
crying for the ocean,
she's trapped by fear
of fathomless salt water,
and the myriad upon myriad
grains of sand.
unlocks the door,
relocks the door.
She is in -
everyone is out.
She's afraid.
It's the glimpse of swallow's tail
flicked across the corner of a windscreen,
that golden thing
moving its slow thighs
through the desert to Bethlehem.
She's changed the locks three times,
changed partners,
raised a hedge of children,
read every book
on the power of the name -
but no name occurs to her.
Like a pearl in a bathtub
crying for the ocean,
she's trapped by fear
of fathomless salt water,
and the myriad upon myriad
grains of sand.
posted by burning moon at 2:54 PM
10 Comments:
This holds a very palpable sense of dread, the tension remains taught throughout the poem, its very well done.
S4 is beyond me, I don't understand it but I am hoping you will explain.
Excellent piece kid
mmm, st 3 and 4 are about dark omens, the dread of the unknown, unreal, or imagined.
The lines about a golden thing moving its slow thighs towards Bethlehem is a reference to this wonderful poem by Yeats ... which now that I'm re reading it, sort of annexes well with my poem. Channeling perhaps? lol
Yeats "The Second Coming"
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
I see.....*grins*
See, this is the problem with being 'thinly read' as apposed to 'widely read'
It is an amazing piece of writing, I can see why it impacted with you.
Tis a magnificent poem eh? Yeats is one of the few old timer R&R poets I can get my head around.
His work is truly genius. To be able to move people, write with meaning, and also adhere to a rhyme scheme is amazing to me. It makes me feel like such a clunker!
You are not a clunker, I have seen you produce rhyming poetry and you have the skill for it if you so wished.
Funny,free verse rules the world now, yet no one buys it, yet every greeting card on the planet costs x amount and has some crappy rhyming verse in it lol
lol. yup. that's life for ya. BTW, did you get the collection of poems I emailed to you?
nope
When?
I haven't received anything from you kiddo
I sent you an email a couple of weeks ago with a copy of my entry to the Kathleen Grattan award attached. Must have sent it to an old email. I'll try again.
cool.
I will be interested to see it *smile*
god, my bloody internet service has been on off, on off, all day! grrr
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