- Non-Erotic Poetry
- Swan Lake
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A timeless image on the autumn lake –
a sudden gleam of white amidst the reeds
lit buy the evening sun, enough to make
that stilted image on which brightness feeds.
Its graceful poise will answer all your needs
and it will bind you in the oldest spell
as like a beacon in the night it leads
you to the magic haunt where lovers dwell.
Too soon, though, autumn sounds contentment's knell.
Life's not quite as straightforward as it seems –
grey mist obscures that shape you love so well
and hope fades fast beyond the reach of dreams.
The swan will take your presence there amiss
and rear, and lift her wings at you, and hiss.
- COMMENTS
Cleardaynowabout 10 years agoI now think this is my favourite of the three. Possibly because I left this one till today to comment.
The single beautiful metaphor would be enough for most writers but you bend it back on itself and then shift it again so it is so strong and so mysterious yet clear at the same time.
Then the structure and flow. I started thinking about the poem and that again the rhyme of the last two lines gave such a good emphasis. It was only then that I realised that there was irregularly spaced rhyming on every single line. Well my wife says that I notice very little of what is going on round me. However, I think that it is a tribute to your mastery that the rhyming should blend in effortlessly (instead of sticking out like a sore thumb) and the shift in rhyme sound should itself be a key element of the poem.
Incidentally and going back to Fall from Grace, I love the device there of talking about life as being a metaphor for the lake rather than the other way round. Sublime.
