I think you know what I mean. There are instances in our lives we never forget. A lot of them possess some form of intrinsic beauty that impresses itself upon our memories. For me, watching a sunset is one of those moments. Watching a sunset on Midsummer's day is particularly poignant for me.
I used to live in the most northerly part of the United Kingdom - the Shetland Islands. There, on midsummer, at midnight, you can watch the sun touch the horizon and then start its ascent again. It's magical. It doesn't help much with sleeping. But it's magical.
And so I recalled the magical moment of sunsets by writing a snapshot poem called Midsummer. Where I am in the South West of England, we don't have the delight of watching the midnight sun, but we do have very light nights. So I wrote what someone has termed 'a breathless' poem. You can't read it out in one breath (ok, there's a challenge for you to disprove me...). It has no punctuation, and it has no upper case letters. It's just a grab at a very small fragment of time. What I'm trying to do here is use the words in a sharp flow without interruption to try to describe and capture the moment.
Let me know what you think - of the poem sure, but more importantly, of the technique of capturing that one moment in time through the use of a flow of words.
Personally, I think it's so much better that using a camera.
Midsummer
yellow fireball conjugates with hot dolorous red behind the rapid black arterial branches that reach out to grasp like antiseptic sutures gripping tight on wounded flesh where bark falls slow away from boughs in cool arborial langour creaking onto forest floor the globe glowers alone suspended lonely like a dust mote dancing in a shaft of golden light and yellow fireball sinks toward its fine denouement glowing dragging red and ochre shards like old detritus from a shattered wooden cart the yellow fireball soft departs just like a slow train leaves its platform while the purple and the black flow in so inexorably to claim the vacant space it leaves while myriads of coloured points the sprinkling of a dim and distant host of lights so silently appear and blink in place to stand like sentinels for the greeting of elusive dawn
Steve Wheeler © 22 June, 2023
Image from Wikimedia Commons by Arne Eide
Icing on the cake
ReplyDeletelanding at heathrow after successful thesis defence in edinburgh july evening sunlight streaming through the cabin pilot’s voice announcing pridefully to look left and see the flagship concorde and out of the window there it is end on etched in sun lined beauty the icing on the cake of a triumphant day like someone put it there deliberately to make this moment perfect and silent celebrations blaze inside my head
That's the ticket! Glad to see this little piece of snapshot poetry. Also, the academic reference resonates with me... PhD work and research is a large piece of my career. It's lovely to see someone draw the two together as fully as you do, Iain.
DeleteAh ha!!! And I’m not not talking about “Take On Me” either! Now I understand where you are coming from… at first I thought this was about a meteor or some kind of bomb… not at all… you have the best metaphoric puzzles Steve. This reminds me of living in Florida on the beach on the West side…. watching the sun set over the water from my bedroom. Breathless indeed. I saw it rise on the east side from near Daytona… just as incredible. You captured the slow flow so well upon the reread… it made this poem really move!!
ReplyDeleteVery kind of you. Thanks for the affirmation.
DeleteAs a lover of words I thoroughly enjoyed the variety used here. The non-existent punctuation did take a little getting used to, but once you ‘tap in’ it reads like a burst of sun rays hitting your face. Always learning from you, Steve. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteUniversal Peace & Love 🪷
Thanks Karin. For me, this is a natural way of writing, because it captures the moment perfectly for me. Lack of punctuation and upper case letters helps the piece flow beyond the narrative into the moment.
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