Still Life

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Angeline
Angeline
86 Followers

It’s past noontime and birds
speak a welter of whistle
warble honk and tweet.
Robins chirp mellifluous,
jays shrill and shriek,
crows jeer, squawking
at the shallow fields.

There are no human voices
only birds and echoes
on the wind, unclear echoes
dispossessed of breath and skin,
carried in the breeze, echoes
of some remove.

The trees are spare of leaves,
traffic a distant hushing past

though two wheels turning
in the lane crack loud
like breaking rock
and gravel patters jaggedly
as scattered bone.
The birds retreat then stop,
their small heads cocked.
Dust almost settles.

The stones repose in intermittent
rows unkempt and leaning slightly
down as if impatient with
the ground and this vast
matinee of sky.

Angeline
Angeline
86 Followers
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  • COMMENTS
12 Comments
Fish_TalesFish_Talesover 12 years ago
Real

If any reader lived where I live, then they would understand this all the better. Context is everything and words can have a very different meaning depending on the reader. Yeah, you used mellifluous, but so what? It made me FEEL and that's what matters.

ishtatishtatabout 13 years ago
Still but?

I think Vrose is right, some judicious pruning might improve, for example does "squawking at the shallow fields" add anything. Then you've said "on the wind" and a couple of lines later, "carried in the breeze;" do you need both and if you do, maybe stick with either "in" or "on"?

Nightingales or Skylarks mellifluous, yes, but Robins? Maybe they are in the Carolinas but in Oz they're a squeaky lot!

Still better than 99% of submissions and a good piece of work

vrosej10vrosej10about 13 years ago
An Imagist Poem!

I though I was the only one here who dabbled in that style. I like it very much. My only comment is that is could be tightened further with some pruning here and there but I loved it. Reminds me of Hoar Frost by Amy Lowell. Got a 5 and a recommend.

buttersbuttersabout 13 years ago
this has me thinking

and thinking

it's like a still life that's come to life but then 'almost settles' - so, as 12oh remarks, it's 'unsettling'. that's no bad thing for a poem to be, imo - it's .. i can't even decide what it is! perhaps this is because we, as readers, are more used to dealing with fish or foul, whereas this is surf n turf. it really is reflective of life, though - its activity, its pauses, its contemplatory stretches of time before time jolts and moves on again in noise...

the phrase that reached for me the most was this:

unclear echoes

dispossessed of breath ...

i love this. absolutely.

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