Soulstice

[billy]

Each dawn’s bright rise is but a turn, a cyclic twist above the blinded earth;
The living feel each passing day, clicked by a ratchet hooked by time.
But we below have run the race, and sense but seasons in our bones;
a winter comes, a summer next, spring and autumn barely touch. a spring comes next
Lagging warmth, slow risen, peaks: then drains so gently into ground. nice and gentle in it's inage

The quick, above, entranced by life, enthralled by futures promised fair,
will come to yearn the fast embrace, the steady passage, constant night.
That you know not what death can bring, nor care to know, nor dare to guess,
is all the better whilst you stir, and all the better when you die.
This the secret no one tells, why none return to clarify. really like this stanza. wordy as hell but full of gravitas that is a weighty truism

Ask not the question “What of me?”, for whilst you stride the changing plane,
your footsteps pulse upon your fate, and deep in darkness souls vibrate;
a friend or two, a brother lost, a father grieved, a mother mourned,
a lover once, but now long gone, a worshipped wife, a much loved son.
This is the way, the course, of life and this is the longest day. are either of the is's needed?

Tectak
The summer solstice
June 2012

i think, as i stated above; that it's extremely wordy....but i think it's also extremely good and wouldn't remove anything but the two is's were the choice mine. it, free flowing with a classic sound, yet it suits the life and death of a modern world in a modern idiom. i agree with penguin that it does have Shakespearian quality to it, but only in as much that it flows almost effortlessly along. it takes more than a couple of reads to get into the poem proper but once there it's a delight to roam around in.

so that's no nits from me (almost)

thanks for the read.