< like leaves >

[rayheinrich]

                                  < like leaves >
                                                      for Pat
                               
                                a picnic blanket
                                in the park
                                the leaves
                                the sun glows through them
                                as we're lying here
                                i listen to you
                                read the poems you love
                                you tell me of your day
                                your breath
                                the casual warmth
                                of your light touch
                                these simple things
                                so quickly gone
                               
                                and here we are
                                the chill of fall
                                where all is quiet except our hearts
                                we watch the leaves content to fall
                                through shadows of late afternoon
                                and we pretend they are not us
                               
                                but on this blanket
                                in this park
                                our love
                                it draws us up
                                it weaves us tight
                                and we forget the time
                                we'll have no summers left
                                no winters waiting for us
                                when our wishes, promises
                                will lie like leaves
                                turned lazily from breeze to breeze
                                our life
                                our love
                                how quickly gone
                                how slight our light breath moves    
                                across these leaves
                               
                                            - - -

[tectak]

                                  < like leaves >
                                                      for Pat
                               
                                a picnic blanket
                                in the park
                                the leaves
                                the sun glows through them
                                as we're lying here
                                i listen to you
                                read the poems you love
                                you tell me of your day
                                your breath
                                the casual warmth
                                of your light touch
                                these simple things
                                so quickly gone
                               
                                and here we are
                                the chill of fall
                                where all is quiet except our hearts
                                we watch the leaves content fall
                                through shadows of late afternoon
                                and we pretend they are not us
                               
                                but on this blanket
                                in this park
                                our love
                                it draws us up
                                it weaves us tight
                                and we forget the time
                                we'll have no summers left
                                no winters waiting for us
                                when our wishes, promises
                                will lie like leaves
                                turned lazily from breeze to breeze
                                our life
                                our love
                                how quickly gone
                                how slight our light breath moves    
                                across these leaves
                               
                                            - - -

A thing of beauty, ray. It would be churlish to beat you up over grammar punctuation issues.You will note that I ommited a comma between "grammar" and "punctuation" as you do between the "the leaves" and "the sun" and "our life"/"ourlove". This is pure narration, and as I have made the point recently to AN Other on these boards, it works only because I trust your intent. No such reasoning can excuse the "i"  in lower case as this foible transmits nothing.
Small nits not worth mentioning. Bare soul verse alrighty.
Best,
tectak

[Psyve]

This is beautiful and deliciously melancholic. I love it. The metaphor of falling leaves first seen through the contented laziness of a perfect and happy summer's day, and then seen through the darker lens of impending darkness (on a "late afternoon") in fall. I see Fall here again used metaphorically ... bringing the impending cold and darkness of winter. A sense of foreboding permeates the second verse. Verse 3 is beautifully melancholic.
Very nicely done.
-Psyve

[rayheinrich]

A thing of beauty, ray. It would be churlish to beat you up over grammar punctuation issues.You will note that I omitted a comma between "grammar" and "punctuation" as you do between the "the leaves" and "the sun" and "our life"/"our love". This is pure narration, and as I have made the point recently to AN Other on these boards, it works only because I trust your intent. No such reasoning can excuse the "i"  in lower case as this foible transmits nothing.
Small nits not worth mentioning. Bare soul verse alrighty.
Best,
tectak

Thanks for liking it. I spent SO many hours writing it, I'm amazed I can still bear to read it.
I'm grateful that you read it and liked it as this confirms that I haven't lost my sentience.
The threat of 'churlishness' is a small price to pay.

ray

    P.S.

And... There are no punctuation marks because the punctuation is done with line
breaks, thematic shifts, and iambic feet. The 'i' is in lower case because everything
else is in lower case and because I like rhetorical tautologies.

Actually, I find that stupid little 'i' esthetically pleasing because, as a young squirt,
I (along with a few million other wannabe poets) idolized E. E. Cummings. Most of his
poems use very little uppercase and very few punctuation marks. Naturally, when I
tried to write poetry, I tried to imitate my idol. But somehow I got it in my head that
he didn't use either at all. By the time I realized my mistake, I'd been writing
poetry without either for so long that it had permanently maimed my esthetics.
I couldn't convince myself it wasn't beautiful and thus the tragic tail of the
shaggy dog ends with 'i' .  

If I were going to beat me up with something, I'd point out the florid
melodrama, the clichéd metaphor of seasonal progression equating to aging,
the numerous moth-eaten anatomical 'love' metaphors (jeez, I even worked
'hearts' in), and using 'leaves' so many times that it really ended up
being fall. All that stuff. But I love writing love poetry, and the genre
has a lot in common with Japanese Noh theater in that its extremely codified.
Love poetry has its own language, and the language doesn't have that many words.
Ooh, profound.

---

This is beautiful and deliciously melancholic. I love it.  The metaphor of falling leaves  first seen through the contented laziness of a perfect and happy summer's day,  and then seen through the darker lens of impending darkness (on a "late afternoon") in fall. I see Fall here again used metaphorically ... bringing the impending cold and darkness of winter.  A sense of foreboding permeates the second verse. Verse 3 is beautifully melancholic.
Very nicely done.
-Psyve

I love "deliciously melancholic" . That you thought that pleases me a great deal.
Thanks for reading it and taking the time to analyze it.

---

You have a rare gift, Ray. Emperors new clothes? This is the Emperors bare soul. If anyone
hung some punctuation on it, the poem would shake them off like dead leaves.
Beautiful read. G.

I officially embrace your ardent compliment and consider myself pathetically flattered.

I'm actually one of the people who never stopped seeing the clothes.
I remember shouting at the kid: "They're conceptual! Ain't you learned nothing in art class?"

"If anyone hung some punctuation on it, the poem would shake them off like dead leaves."
Great image there, my metaphor has been skillfully extended.