if i were born a bloodroot
i'd gladly be plucked by you
i'd partake in your pursuit
to make enemies overrun with rue.
if i were born a raven
i'd sing your song of forging
i'd sell my soul into damnation
and dance to cries of mourning.
if i were born the earth
i'd swallow the critters and creepers
so i could forever hold your girth
and not be one with the weepers.
i am the air which you inhale
and you are the lead that tips my scale.
This is engaging experiment with the sonnet form. The rhymes fit with a Shakespearean sonnet, but it is unmetered. You're not the first to remove the metrical component of the sonnet and focus just on the rhymes. There are examples of such "pseudo-sonnets" (I just made that up) in The Making of a Poem, and I can see how it would be tempting to try one!
ReplyDeleteRather than using meter, the poem is built out of a refrain--"If I were born a ______." It also uses parallelism in the three quatrains, which all follow a similar syntactic pattern, giving the poem a sense of formal cogency, despite the lack of meter.
My favorite line is "if i were born the earth /
i'd swallow the critters and creepers" That line expresses a bold, even visionary imagination, and I love how the poem proceeds to something so large as the earth itself.
I am a little confused about the final line. Is it confusing a scale with an hourglass? What if you revised it to "and you are the lead that tips my scale." Lead is actually used with scales as a counterbalance and weight, and lead also provides a perfect contrast with the air in the last line: one thing light and one heavy. What do you think?
I love your suggestion! Thank you!
DeleteWoww Rachel this is great and so full of images. I loved the way you pull a reader in from the first stanza when you say
ReplyDeleteif i were born a bloodroot
i'd gladly be plucked by you
i'd partake in your pursuit
to make enemies overrun with rue.
This is so cool and imaginative that I felt like I was in this moment. I would however suggest a small edit to the last line of this stanza by removing to and just going to
Make enemies overrun with rue. The extra to is not needed here in your powerful line. I love how you close out with this powerful stanza of
i am the air which you inhale
and you are the grains of sand that tip my scale.
but again I'd suggest removing the and and just saying what they are
you are grains of sand that tip my scale
just sounds more readable to me. Loved this poem thank you for sharing.
you make a beautiful use of alliteration that makes this poem flow like liquid. it adds to the nature you embody.
ReplyDeletemy only edit is to make the final line a bit more active:
and you are the grains of sand that tip my scale.
i would change it to:
and you are the sandy grain that tips my scale--> this makes you more blended into the earth and ground while life surrounds you.