Hi Mike,
I like this poem! The pictures it paints include mood and tenderness. The
phrase: "these things need me to look after them" is amazingly powerful!
(And after reading the different phrasing of the first line - all the more
so!)
If it were mine (which I wish it were!) I'd be thinking hard about the words
"this vivid bloom" in the last stanza... and wondering if I've got it right.
I'd be thinking which vivid bloom? (thinking I need to see what it is that's
blooming as much as I can see everything else: the apples, the tree trunks,
the sea... etc.). If I felt awkward about changing the line I might consider
including the information I want elsewhere, in the title perhaps).
Bob
>Gift
>
>These things can look after themselves.
>The early summer apples hang tight
>and hard, or lie in the dew-soaked
>grass in the shade below the trunks.
>
>I look far beyond them to where
>a night-dark sea rises and falls
>with a compelling rhythm.
>The same rhythm that under-
>
>pins Brahms´ fourth symphony.
>`Er lebte wie ein richtiger Künstler,´
>you told me once. I see you, too.
>The sky is as black as your hair.
>
>The blind casts moonlight stripes
>across my back in the same way
>that the wind carries night scents.
>These things need me to look after them.
>
>You move under a palm. Your silhouette
>crosses the moon-path on the water.
>You bring me this vivid bloom,
>this gift of a luscious fruit with a waxy rind.
>
>
>
>Mike
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