----- Original Message -----
From: "Max Richards" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 4:49 AM
Subject: melb winter morning
> Melbourne Winter Morning
>
> Our winter here
> is not severe
> and lasts less than
> a quarter of a year.
>
> Yet - spreading peanut butter
> on her morning toast
> before I take her tray to her,
> I think, dream, image most
>
> some future morning,
> spring or early summer,
> when we're out of here,
> well down the coast road,
>
> humming beside the cliff-
> views of surf, ocean,
> and blue Bass Strait...
> curving down then to Lorne,
>
> lucky town and long beach,
> its pier where we've stood
> astonished by a show-off whale
> spouting for a holiday crowd.
>
> The old evergreen shade trees
> will be at their best,
> and the young people at play
> eye-catchingly undressed.
>
> The well-stocked book exchange
> will beckon invitingly,
> and the rival ice-cream shops
> advertising excitingly.
>
> Winter mornings, the wife's
> expecting that peanut-butter toast,
> and the dogs by the bed drooling
> for their tiny piece of crust.
>
> And me in the cold kitchen
> holding out for that slide
> down the hill into Lorne,
> the sun warm and the water wide.
>
>
> Max Richards
> Doncaster, Melbourne
> Wednesday 23 August 2006
>
Max, I like this but I think the first three stanzas could be smoothed and
condensed somewhat. The verb "imaged" is awkward, fussy - and, really, why
the three verbs - "think, dream, imag(in)e" - for one idea? I don't think
the repetition adds anything. Otherwise, nice, sensual; good contrast
between the morning task and the fantasy.
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