Perspectives on a Lake
On that shore small people
move,
walk tiny dogs, sit on small
benches;
on this shore birds patrol
their grove,
slow and long-legged under
green branches
that etch the unrelenting rays
in bars of complicated shade.
Stretched wide, out there the
sunshine plays
easily on tree, colonnade
and path. Perspective grinds
them down
to semblance on a tapestry,
a distant likeness of the town,
pastiche of inches, lacquered
sky.
Whilst here, an insensible
curved rat –
still wet from the swim that
made her great.
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3 comments:
Bars of complicated shade. Yes.
Beautiful pictorial images, then that very strange ending!
I enjoyed this.
Fourteen lines, ABAB rhyming, but not iambic. So it's not what I thought. But it solves a problem that recurs with me - a tendency towards polysyllabism. Sooner or later I find myself up against the need (perhaps the secret desire - and because it looks clever) to insert a single word which eats up most of a line. I have never managed to sustain simplicity and I envied your first four lines straight away (plus others of course). I conclude: showing off will always undermine my attempts to write verse. Even when the sentiments are heart-felt. Is there a cure?
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