The Go Board

[Terry A]

The tea
wrapped jasmine flowers
through the air     Rain
fell like mist and mingled
in the mind     Unbearably shy
she lifted her eyes.
 

The hawk on his arm
flapped its wings    flew towards her
he pulled it back
and moved a stone      Smiling
too much and stroking his chin
                 the young night had just begun.

 

 

[Tinker]

Terry,  I haven't read this yet, the poem on the page is just pleasing to the eye and I wanted to make note of that before I went on.  All too often we forget poetry is not just for the ear, the heart, and the mind but also for the eye.  The appearance on the page can make the difference in whether it is read or not.    Love it.  Ok, now I'll read.

Oh, and it sings with musical alliteration.  I think I just fell in love.  This poem is romantic, lyrical, and just plain good.  My heart is warmed, I'm smiling and grateful you shared this with us today.

Thank you,  ~~Judi

 

[badger11]

Atmospheric melodrama Terry. Games within games! Genders defaulting to nature's archetypes. Nice use of consonance in S1. Is 'he' the beginning of another sentence? But I guess you are using the line break for a comma pause. I think you do the same with the closing sentence, otherwise the night would have a chin!

Bw

Phil

[Terry A]

Phil, the last line would sound better if it said-‘The young night was just beginning’ but I must change the ‘smiling’ and ‘stroking his chin’ to reduce the -ing-ness. Will rewrite a little. And ‘he’ should have been capitalized. David has inspired revision. Fine-tuning.

Thanks Judi. You grasp the tension well. Go is a game that provides countless metaphors for life. As does falconry.

[Assaf1981]

Liked the alliteration. But there are excessive spaces between certain words. For example, there is too much spacing between the words, 'Stone', and 'smiling.'

 

[Terry A]

Thank you Assaf for commenting. In the absence of punctuation, I use spaces to pace the read. Periods, commas, semi-colons, sometimes feel to interfere with it, as though adding information that isn't necessary, almost an artificial imposition upon the poem, an interference with the energy of the poem.  This is intuitive. whether it works, is another question.

Free verse is the most difficult form to DO WELL for it relies on creating a poem without using traditional poetic form and structure to do the work of determining something as a poem..  But alas, free verse has also created  copious amount of inept "poetry" so prevalent now which has also freed itself from any recognition of how poetic device (imagery, metaphor, sound, line breaks, etc.) must compensate for the lack of traditional form. So it’s a challenge.