Hi Colin,
I really like what this poem is doing! There’s something appealing in the 
way it moves me from a (pine?) desk out into the garden and then way out to 
elsewhere…
And, like all good poems do, it sends me off on my own travels as well. I’m 
reminded of Bishop Berkeley (and an essay he wrote where he based a 
philosphical argument about perception and the existence of God on seeing a 
tree from a window) and I’m remembering poems by Tomas Transtormer where he 
also takes my imagination beyond pine trees in his native Sweden…
In other words, it’s working!
There’s one or two technical points I’m wondering about, though…
There’s a couple of lines:
"and yet no matter how often I have gone unheeding by,"
and
"whence springs the treasured green?
Yeurgh!
I sense the long line about walking down the garden appears as it does 
because you didn’t want to repeat the line you’d used "as I walked along the 
rough path/ and given it no second thought:" again. And the word "green" is 
there because you've a substitute word for tree, and you've got "pine" (in 
"pine against blue") and you're desperate for another! How about narrowing 
the focus down to just mention a branch at some stage, or allude to the 
shape of the tree... keep juggling!
And then I sense you’re running out of the right words again because you use 
“land” twice. (And euphamisms like “Land” can create problems can’t they 
just!).
Could it be that you've moved into the "I ponder" voice too early in the 
poem? Do you need to keep asking questions? Couldn't you make statements 
instead? Could you keep it based in the visible world until the last 
sentence? (Or even in the last sentence as well!)
How about working hard at the ending? Maybe being more specific (naming a 
place and, so, not needing the word "land") so I then keep feeling your poem 
is rooted in the world that’s specific (and I feel I'll still be able to 
discover the metaphysical). Trust the reader, let the reader do more work!
Know what I mean?
Whaddya think?
Bob







>From: "Dewar Colin [FVPC]" <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New sub (view from the desk)
>Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 13:45:34 -0000
>
>View From the Desk
>
>
>Sitting here at my desk
>how can I not know
>it is only the pine tree at the end of my garden
>that I see through the glass?
>Have I not passed it often
>as I walked along the rough path
>and given it no second thought:
>just a Norway Spruce in a bit of hard ground,
>lank and half grown, wet, not even indigenous
>and yet no matter how often I have gone unheeding by,
>beyond the window
>with no land in sight
>it is pine against blue.
>Can it be from my garden
>whence springs the treasured green?
>I dream of mountains with tree lines
>and northern snow.
>Now and from this angle
>in another land
>it seems to grow.
>
>
>
>________________________________________________
>
>
>Colin


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