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gruntingslime
08-29-2010, 03:45 AM
There was a meadow just outside the town
Which hadn’t been walked in for decades.
It was surrounded by a thick of trees,
Bordered by a small highway to the west.
It was a meadow of shifting seasons,
None were stable, as winter blew
Back into the spring
And summer sucked the color
Out of the autumn leaves.
No one was around to see the changes take place,
But if they were to approach and enter the meadow
It would already be too late
And a new season would have taken hold.
It is in the nature of man to be in motion,
By the time he has left and returned to the meadow, the season would have changed,
But the change would seem natural and the time would be lost.

The unseen meadow wept tears of winter
And hid beneath a coat of frost and snow.

October was nearing middle age.
The trees in the abandoned meadow drooped,
The highest branches became flimsy and rubber,
The leaves wilted on the branches and decayed back into dirt
Which stuck between the grooves of the bark
And melted down along the trunk into the roots.
The grass curdled, hissed then rolled up
And shrunk into itself,
Bleached by sickness and fear,
A ruddy mustard color.

This is the meadow,
And one is only an ant to go walking in it,
To the feeling of being lost in a wilderness of cloud
With a storm of down whirling up around you.
These are the feet of trees you see, just a toe, bigger than the entire human body.
But these are the weeping meadows,
Where tears seep up from the ground
And swallow the nonexistent trespassers whole.

Hawkman
08-29-2010, 04:28 AM
Greetings, gruntingslime

this is really quite an interesting piece with vivid and mysterious imnagery. I would however suggest that:

"By the time he has left and returned to the meadow, the season would have changed,
But the change would seem natural and the time would be lost."

could do with a little tidy, as you have a confusion of tenses here.

Best, H

gruntingslime
08-29-2010, 06:53 AM
Although I hate to turn down any advice, the shifting tenses is a result of the content which deals with shifting time. I know I have a bad habit of playing with things like tense, also grammar, etc. which often is looked down upon in major publishing...

PrinceMyshkin
08-29-2010, 02:39 PM
It's remarkable how, slowly, this grows on one until one is wholly given over to it. Personally, I had no trouble with the tenses in the lines that Hawkman singled out.

hillwalker
08-29-2010, 05:13 PM
A really well-drawn image of the seasons, and in particular the way autumn and winter bring decay which in itself creates its own beauty.

not sure if 'thick of trees' in line 3 was meant to be 'thicket of trees' - no matter either way.

gruntingslime
08-30-2010, 12:27 AM
Thank you both for your kind words; I had been sitting here twitching and despairing about the whole thing.:crazy: