Chesapeake Bay

[JohnS]

I step on deck to watch the dawn,
all’s quiet on the bay,
and when the mist has burnt away
we’ll have a fine new day.

The forest wears its mantel now
of brown and gold and red,
for burning summer days have passed,
and fall is here instead.

Great delta-flights of honking geese
return to winter waters,
and cooler winds blow on the bay,
they’re telling me it’s time I was away,

so now I’ll raise the anchor,
set course for warmer seas
and head down south to sandy keys,
but next year I’ll be here again,
amongst these golden trees.


This was an excercise for me in meter and imagery.

[wasellajam]

I step on deck to watch the dawn,
all’s quiet on the bay,
and when the mist has burnt away
we’ll have a fine new day.

The forest wears its mantel now
of brown and gold and red,
for burning summer days have passed,
and fall is here instead.

Great delta-flights of honking geese
return to winter waters,
and cooler winds blow on the bay,
they’re telling me it’s time I was away,

so now I’ll raise the anchor,
set course for warmer seas
and head down south to sandy keys,
but next year I’ll be here again,
amongst these golden trees.


This was an excercise for me in meter and imagery.

Hi, John, I enjoyed the imagery and that Autumn feeling of imminent change it evoked.

The poem has pretty strong iambic meter throughout, I had the most trouble demoting "great" S3 L1, you can do better
there.
You set the poem off on a pattern of alternating 4 feet/ 3 feet lines, then abandon it in the last 6 lines. For me that weakened the poem.

Same on the erratic rhyme scheme. While I can enjoy the here and there rhyme, the effort to twist some lines into it seems particularly awkward when there is no commitment to a rhyme scheme that I could see. I'm talking about S1L4, a real waste of a line for no payoff, and "they’re telling me it’s time I was away," this line needs to be reworked to match the natural speech pattern of the rest of the poem.

So, a really good effort here and a poem that I enjoyed reading, even in spring when autumn seems far in the future. Thanks for posting it.