Each September

[Brahma]

Each September

The book slides from my lap
and slaps against the tiled smoothness
of our lounge room floor,
still bare of rugs
despite her searching
every carpet shop in town.
She is meticulous in this as all things;
knows the weavers and the dyes
of Persia and Kashmir
and is prepared to wait for what she wants.

Suddenly,
still only half aroused from sleep,
I sense her presence in the room -
a merest brief displacement
of the autumn air.
She loves this time of year,
and each September comes alive
with nature’s harvest
of the reds and golds and russet browns
that are her favoured colours.

I hear the rustle of her dress -
that gown of silk and lace she wore last spring
to celebrate our union;
then safely stored away
for Christening.

I feel her closeness now,
her whispered breath upon my face,
and breathe in turn
the perfume of her natural self.

Then,
in that moment’s hesitation
just before
she moves her cheek on mine
and offers up
the soft, expectant fullness of her mouth,
I turn, half rise to face her,
and behold …

not her,
but just those silent remnants of our love
that fill this room,
unlovely now,
resentful of her absence.

I steel myself against the too familiar pain;
blink back the tears that prick my eyes;
and in the bitter bleakness of my heart
revile again that nameless,
faceless,
misbegotten thing
that broke its promise to us both,
and took her from me.

[Delta40]

ouch! what a sharp turn at 'Then,' You really pulled the rug from under my feet there. Well done - one can feel the loss more deeply.

[Brahma]

Hello, Delta40.

Thank you for your response.

In imitation of life, perhaps, poetry too can sometimes hold surprises.

Regards,

Brahma.

[MorpheusSandman]

Whoah! I didn't see that turn coming! What's most remarkable about this piece, besides the surprising shift, is that it captures that real phenomenon that happens between sleep and awake when you're briefly alive in another point of time within your own life before some conscious realization hits in and destroys the illusion. I've had that happen to me before. I think most who have lost someone has been through it. It's always like them dying all over again, and I think you really capture that here.

Technically, all I have to suggest is to be a bit more mindful of your line breaks, especially when using enjambment. I've experimented with this a lot and I find it very tricky in free verse. Arbitrary breaks snap the flow and images and detract from the emotion. There's two times when I really like enjambment breaks, and that's when you can split one thought into two different complete thoughts, so you essentially read one line as one thought, and the next as another that adds on to the first such as: "then safely stored away / for Christening." (the first line reads as a complete thought, the next adds to it). The other times I like it is when the break ends on an important word or begins the next line with an important word, or when the break thematically separates one thought from another. But something like:

"The book slides from my lap
and slaps against the tiled smoothness
of our lounge room floor,
still bare of rugs
despite her searching
every carpet shop in town."

I think it would read better as:

"The book slides from my lap and
slaps against the tile surface of our lounge room floor,
still bare of rugs
despite her searching every carpet shop in town"

You get both the effects I talked about; the first line ends with enjambment to allow the verb "slap" to really hit as the first word of line two, while the second line completes the thought, and the third line adds to it, while the fourth line develops it as the final complete thought of the stanza. I also like the modulation of long/short/long line, as the "still bare of rugs" line stands out as being more significant in its brevity, and I think it gives it a more metaphoric sense.

[Brahma]

Hello, Morpheus.

Thank you for your constructive critique.

I am relatively new to poetry, and the emotional impetus is still not fully equipped with technical expertise.

Which is why responses such as yours are invaluable.

Incidentally, have you ever come across, but in any case what do you think of, the expression: 'Writing poetry without rhyme is like playing tennis without a net.'

Thank you again.

Regards,

Brahma.

[deryk]

I really liked the apprehension of the beginning even more that the tonal shift at the end. It's a very nice build up. The narrative works really well here, this might even work better as prosody. You may want to consider it.

[MorpheusSandman]

Incidentally, have you ever come across, but in any case what do you think of, the expression: 'Writing poetry without rhyme is like playing tennis without a net.'I've heard it before, and it's a subject I've thought quite a bit about. End-rhyme, especially when combined with regular meter, certainly has a natural musicality and makes poetry easier to remember, but I don't think it's ever been the be-all, end-all of poetry. It's a just a tool, and while it's a strong and popular one I certainly don't think every piece requires it. But when you do write without rhyme you have to find other forms of musicality and rhythm in the language, diction, meter, form, etc. that compensates for it, perhaps in more subtle ways. One good lesson to learn is the ordering rule, which simply states that words that open and end lines are more important/stronger than those in the middle, so this makes what you start and end lines on very important. I also think it's important to learn the different effects that different meters have in terms of the rhythm, and then what switching them up does. There's so much that can be done simply through the natural rhythms of language that you certainly don't need rhyme to make great poetry, but you have to be mindful of those tools to make sure you are writing poetry and not prose that's simply broken up into lines and stanzas.

[Brahma]

Thank you, Morpheus.

I've copied your comment into my poetry notebook, and will study it at length.

Regards,

Brahma.