> Hello Sue,
I like this very much, you really evoke the scene, the sleepless, meditating figure and feeling effectively. There are just a couple of things IŽd query. In S1 line 12 IŽm a little bothered by the phrase `or that to meŽ. It is perfectly logical to comment that the man the narrator is watching doesnŽt know he is being watched, but there is no reason for him to know, or even speculate about, how the boat lights would appear to her. I think IŽd like to cut S2 line 2 as being over-stating and a bit too telly for the tone of the poem. In the following line I find the word `peaceŽ a bit too insistent, too, especially since `peacefulŽ appears near the end of the stanza. Could some other quality be used?
I hope this is useful.
Best wishes, Mike
>
> All night the moon and I kept the world.
> All the long night, restless and waking,
> stretching and sighing, I looked
> through the window,
> followed the moon's track over the water,
> saw the moon grow higher, smaller,
> arching over white sand, the waves' cold fire,
> and later still the motel watchman
> returning from the beach, his shirt aglow
> and his long shadow walking.
> He could not know I watched him
> or that to me small lights of fishing boats
> far-out looked like little low stars
> above the beat of surf.
>
> All night I watched the moon go by,
> beyond hate, beyond love,
> until peace entered my bones
> with the bone-light of its passing.
> I cannot count the things I've lost,
> all those bright coins that slipped away;
> somewhere they may exist like bones bleached out
> at the bottom of the sea, memory in windy caves.
> I remember how once I heard a distant surf
> deep in the heart of an empty shell.
> Always, it was my own blood. The moon's blind eyes
> are peaceful, and there are hymns that have no words,
> just a thrum of nothingness like a sea song,
> lulling and lovely and forever.
>
> Sue Scalf
> http://www.members.aol.com/poetscalf
>
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