Old Mine

[MystyrMystyry]

Where the sun heats the air
into a breathless transience
Where the dry creek snakes
into the hazy distant horizon
Where hard earth has buckled
into red tiles like lizard skin

There you'll find a cracked hill
and some galvinised iron ruins
There you'll kick a watertower
and wonder what they thought
There you'll begin to feel time
and history never happened

Here are rotten planks to cover
the old excavation's entrance
Here are scratch marks in stone
the pickaxe must have scraped
Here are bootprints baked into
the ancient ground


leading away








.

[Delta40]

MM, I like how each stanza is structured with Where, There and Here. Very nicely done and wonderful imagery. I can hear the empty drum like sound when the watertower is kicked.

The last line, leading way is rather mysterious and leaves the poem somewhat incomplete yet reading it again, I admit that I rather like the 'hanging in the air' finish as it seems to suit a deserted old mine leading away to where?

This is one of my favourites from you. Well done.

[hallaig]

The last line makes the poem. Without it you'd be left thinking 'nice description but so what?'
I feel there's a bit of a contradiction in the lines
"and wonder what they thought
There you'll begin to feel time
and history never happened"
why would you wonder what they thought if you felt time and history never happened?
No sure about the choice of 'heats the air into a a breathless transience'


Good work, though

[MystyrMystyry]

Thankyou Delta :)

[MystyrMystyry]

Thanks Haillag :)

The lines you cite are more about contrast with civilisation. In the city time and history are everywhere, but in the outback human industry is sparsely measured by remnants of structures, half-roads to nowhere, and weather worn ruins of ghost-towns. There are sandstone buildings where people lived, constructed less than a hundred years ago but look like they're from an ancient archeological dig. Also evidence of climate shift - places where once it must have rained heavily, but not in decades, dried-up rivers and lakes appear as you ride along, though invisible from a distance. And always this eerie empty vastness like you're on an alien planet.

Highly recommended ;)

[Bar22do]

Mysty, I feel it's a poem of carved earth and stone of the region (but has an universal dimension), a work of sculpture that both shows and veils mysteries of the "eerie 'empty' vastness"... the rhythm here is imposed by the sculptor's hammer which the poet faithfully renders in words... though you're the sculptor as much as you are the poet. A nice collaboration with great result!

Great thanks and bravos! from

Bar

[Buh4Bee]

This is very nice.

[MystyrMystyry]

Thankyou Bar22do :)

[MystyrMystyry]

Thankyou Buh4Bee :)

[WolfLarsen]

Somebody compared this poem to a sculpture. I agree.

Well done!

The other thing I like about this piece is that every line (or nearly every line) counts. That is, the poet seems to understand that: "prose is beer. Poetry is whiskey."

[MystyrMystyry]

Thankyou Wolf :)

So Johnny Walker on the rocks is it?

[hallaig]

Johnny Walker's a whisky not a whiskey. And no very nice. Go for a glass of Caol Ila with a single small sliver of ice. Best drunk here near the distillery.


http://images.travelpod.com/users/skip-ange/15.1250792592.view-of-the-paps-of-jura-from-caol-ila.jpg

[AuntShecky]

Lots of concrete details--good. Especially effective are lines 5 and 6 and of course the
concluding "strophe" plus final line of your verse.

[MystyrMystyry]

Whisky? Whiskey? I've been confused about it ever since Arthur Daley imported the Japanese counterfeit Whisk(e)y with the tell-tale spelling error...

Cool picture though - especially as today's estimated max is going to crack the thermometer :(

[MystyrMystyry]

Thankyou Aunty :)

[kittypaws]

Did someone say Whiskey???

Once again I am late but must say ~ Mystyr you did a great job with this one. :cheers2:

You showed us a place we would never be able to see but now can envision it thru your eyes.

kittypaws

[MystyrMystyry]

Kitty - and whiskey on her whiskers!

Thanks Kitty :)