Hi Sue,
H'm. This is fine, controlled writing. It's precise - except I think I want
to know the name of the brown birds! (I guess the colour's name, "brown," is
there because of all the other colours in the poem but, because you name an
egret I guess I feel I want this bird's name too).
Part of me doesn't want the word "peace" either! I sense I want the poem to
give me the peaace that's there - not tell me it's there. The word seems to
be there because you've given up on the descriptive instead of giving us a
lingering image to take with us. Know whadda mean?
Bob


>From: Sue Scalf <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Marshes, a revision
>Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 15:20:59 EDT
>
>Tidal Marsh
>
>
>This world is white and blue and green,
>and the air so sweet it makes me dizzy,
>clean as the herons whiter than bone;
>reed grass moves as if a spirit breathed upon it
>this way then that, as the tide sweeps in
>or leaves.  Grass sways from blue horizon
>to blue horizon, and when the moon
>calls the waters to sea, oysters reveal
>their secret beds, and shrimp float
>away to come again. Brown birds vie
>for what is left, then fly away,
>and an egret stands silent as a cat.
>Now the sky is hot pink, rippled with gold,
>layered with purple haze.
>Everything waits as sunset fades,
>lulled into the marshland's peace.
>
>Sue Scalf






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