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psalm_onethirtyoneI'm not sure whether I like this poem or not, so somebody please look at it and tell me whether it sucks. >_<
(Also, why am I still awake? I have to be up to-morrow at seven, and I desperately need a shower.)
When the third moon went out, slowly vanishing
like a shadow getting smaller,
we still swore everything would be all right.
We watched the oceans shift and the tides change
patternless as the crazy quilts
that my mother embroidered during the long winters.
I was the priest; I had my own duties.
I put on my robes, my purple and gold,
my high collar and alb.
I walked in the church at night, praying
in the little light that filtered in through the stained glass windows
changing colour as I went from pew to pew.
I thought surely God would forgive us.
From the church door I could see you.
Your feet on the asphalt in the rain
were dancers of a calibre unfamiliar to me.
I watched you lit up by the lightning
tumbling and cartwheeling in time to the thunder and
out of my hands and
out of the world and
into the darkness of this new storm.
You with your comet-tail trailing behind you,
I mourned you even before you fell
like a fire in the sky, plunging
and landing
out of reach of my voice, which I threw to you like a rope
or fluttering parachute.
You were like a shattering of stars,
like snow under our five moons,
like the jostling seawaters crawling up our beaches with no mind
to pay heed to custom.
I ran through the rain to you
out of the safety of my church, the house I share with God, but
like a moon
you had already vanished.
I thought surely God would forgive us;
but you shone in the lightning and then disappeared.
You were the portrait of our world,
and soon after that the flood took us all.
If you were here, I would tell you how lonely it is to be Noah,
but I have only myself
and my ark
and the memory of my stained glass windows--
and the fire of you falling like a comet, bright and unbounded
through the dark night
into some world
I have never known.
(Also, why am I still awake? I have to be up to-morrow at seven, and I desperately need a shower.)
When the third moon went out, slowly vanishing
like a shadow getting smaller,
we still swore everything would be all right.
We watched the oceans shift and the tides change
patternless as the crazy quilts
that my mother embroidered during the long winters.
I was the priest; I had my own duties.
I put on my robes, my purple and gold,
my high collar and alb.
I walked in the church at night, praying
in the little light that filtered in through the stained glass windows
changing colour as I went from pew to pew.
I thought surely God would forgive us.
From the church door I could see you.
Your feet on the asphalt in the rain
were dancers of a calibre unfamiliar to me.
I watched you lit up by the lightning
tumbling and cartwheeling in time to the thunder and
out of my hands and
out of the world and
into the darkness of this new storm.
You with your comet-tail trailing behind you,
I mourned you even before you fell
like a fire in the sky, plunging
and landing
out of reach of my voice, which I threw to you like a rope
or fluttering parachute.
You were like a shattering of stars,
like snow under our five moons,
like the jostling seawaters crawling up our beaches with no mind
to pay heed to custom.
I ran through the rain to you
out of the safety of my church, the house I share with God, but
like a moon
you had already vanished.
I thought surely God would forgive us;
but you shone in the lightning and then disappeared.
You were the portrait of our world,
and soon after that the flood took us all.
If you were here, I would tell you how lonely it is to be Noah,
but I have only myself
and my ark
and the memory of my stained glass windows--
and the fire of you falling like a comet, bright and unbounded
through the dark night
into some world
I have never known.
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-29 10:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-29 01:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-29 11:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-29 01:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-29 05:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-29 06:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-29 11:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-29 01:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-29 07:36 pm (UTC)I like the structure, kind of a wobbly loop that folds back on itself. I might change the second-to-last line in that fifth stanza to "like the moon", so reinforce the call-back, but that's kind of a pickypicky suggestion.
I love the phrase "a shattering of stars".
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-31 01:16 pm (UTC)I can see why you'd change the line, but I actually like it the way it is--I think a 'the' would break the sound a bit.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-31 01:20 pm (UTC)<3!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-31 01:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-31 01:24 pm (UTC)Seriously, though, this is fine work.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-31 01:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-30 01:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-31 01:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-31 12:10 pm (UTC)I do feel rather obtuse, though, because I'm having no luck interpreting what it actually refers to. :|
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-31 01:23 pm (UTC)It doesn't actually refer to anything. ^^ I honestly just wanted to set it on a different world so that I could use the moons going out one by one.