Triolet № 119366
Dying Abroad
Come home, girl, on a fractious day
to the gravel road lined with fern.
And I'll know (for my feet will have turned that way)
that you've come home, girl, on a fractious day.
Slip sibilant over the fields, so they
will shimmer a moment, and burn
with a feeling not unlike a fractious day
on a gravel road lined with fern.
I'll find you, boy, like an early snow
on a field of uncut hay.
God, I've missed the hay-smelling autumn, so
I'll find you there, like an early snow
from a stonewalled riverside town - so you'll know
that I cannot stay, I cannot stay.
If you'll wait for me, boy, like an early snow,
in a field of uncut hay.
13 comments
I like the second half of that first stanza, starting from slip. Has a nice flow and sound to it. Except I missss the logic of thisss sssound she makesss over the fields, or why, or how this adds to the "trouble" of the day.
These commas - are you purposely trying to kill the flow? Espec. L3 in S2
Nice solid concept though with the early snow on an uncut field of hay. Makes sense. Then, right away, you talk more about hay. Hey.
"hay-smelling" ... very evocative, btw. Does that mean it "smells like hay"? That you miss the smell of hay? Or maybe you are anthropomorphising autumn by giving it a nose. How you must miss that nose.
This is the best thing you've ever written.
kill "slip sibilant." It's clever & reflexive -- which is completely out of place in the mood of the piece.
Perhaps I agree the last fractious line oughtn't be so altered. I'm not sure. Suppose you could say something like "with the feeling your home, girl,...". But you've certainly earned the right to mess with forms however you like...
I came back the day after posting this to change the sibilant line. Then Shuushin said he liked it, and I thought how I haven't been nice enough to him recently. For yourself, consider it changed. The adjective could possibly be "whispering" instead. Or something such.
One of the best I've read in a while on here.
"Slip sibilant over the fields" doesn't really make sense but "Slip over the sibilant fields" would.
The whole poem makes me think of the death scene at the end of Gladiator.
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