This week's poetry bus is driven by Chris at Enchanted Oak. She has given us two photographs from which to choose as inspiration for our bus pass. We chose this one:
Le Petit Bateau
By Lemuel Crouse
A
pond
lies frozen
in my memory:
perfect stillness, glass
surface smooth, reflecting
perfect stillness, glass
surface smooth, reflecting
with the passive love of one
who sees all...yet feels nothing.
An illusion of calm...a lovely pond,
perfectly hiding the tangled wreckage
resting just beneath the liquid mirror.
A little boat once floated right there,
no oarlocks marred its gunwales.
From shaded, grassy shoreline
it nevermore will be cast off,
for now the boat is gone,
carrying with it one
who loved it
but not
me
!
!
20 comments:
Wonderful poem, your words transported me to that boat and that cool river. The structure and the meter of the piece are brilliant :)
Ooh - you've been a naughty boy! I love it!
Lovely. I especially like feel of "oarlocks marred its gunwales" on my tongue. And you are so clever with the type in the shape of a boat!
Thanks for your kind and generous comment on my piece today. It is much appreciated. xx
Very nice. And very nice. My grandfather would like you.
Love that, and the boat shape of your poem!
An almost, not-quite-double etheree fits the bill, never mind the boat! :)
Thanks, y'all! Jinksy, I had forgotten about the double-etheree form! I was just going for the boat shape. I will keep that in mind for the future, as I love the challenge of making each syllable count.
I admire the layering here. A perfect pon, the tangled weeds beneath
So many levels here to enjoy! Amazed you've managed to post a conrete poem (how?) and the four longer lines,
"perfectly hiding the tangled wreckage
resting just beneath the liquid mirror.
A little boat once floated right there,
no oarlocks marred its gunwales."
are perfectly framed. Loved the air of ambiguity that flows through it too; illusion with mirror.
Or even concrete.
Thanks, Titus! I am rather fond of those lines. As for the concrete aspect, I started writing this as a Word document (sadly, I've all but given up pen and paper), then pasted it into the Blogger: New Post: Compose window. There I used the "Alignment" feature to center align the text, and tweaked it to get the look I wanted, mostly by trial and error, substituting or rearranging words, adding an extra space on occasion, etc. There are some significant limitations to Blogger, no doubt, so I was glad to get the look I did, and very glad I wasn't trying to do this on a typewriter!
Very deceptive a bit like water with hidden depths.
great poem. Love the shape of it!
wowww this is really cool! How did you make it look like a boat?? genius!
Bravo!
Perhaps we should have boarded a boat today? Yours looks inviting. 'Illusion of calm' ... my favorite words.
Great poem, loved the shape, forget the boat, stay on the bus!
Love that header painting too.
Thank you, each and every one! I must say that it is a great honor to have my work followed by the legendary Totalfeckineejit, who got this bus rolling in the first place!
Hooray! The Bug has a poet-husband! (and a Southerner to boot!) What could be better? Welcome to the bus.
I really like the poem - form and content.
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