Carried Away
By passerby
Sat, 27 Oct 2007
- 902 reads
1 comments
I day-tripped with child to the riverside.
The water was at its highest. It swelled
Magnetically, she leaned over, the tide
hypnotised, its heaving volume compelled
Her to fall. A tiny plop she was gone,
Drawn down to murky gloom-filled depths. I saw
Her float through littered layers, to rest alone
On the silt of the river’s shifting floor.
Passing curious to fish, her mermaid hair
Grimly wafts in the current. Never here
The fun of bedtime bath, no one to share
This chill resting place of a mother’s fear.
A bell jingled, I blinked, she turned and ran
Laughing through sunlight to the ice-cream van.
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Comments
I think the sonnet is a non
I think the sonnet is a non stanza form, so you just have a sixteen liner with the appropriate ABAB CDCD etc rhyme scheme, I think the convention is a (what is it, a volte?) a surprise, a confounding of expectation at line 9, yours is at the end in the final couplet. That of course is fine if that is your conscious choice; it's your poem after all.
I like the way your poem reads through the line breaks. I have been told it is no longer the fashion to begin each line of verse with a capital (except perhaps in an Acrostic?), and I think it's definitely better not to when the sense crosses the line break. Do you see what I mean?
On reflection I think I prefer the surprise at the end. Her mermaid hair grimly wafts in the current is quite baroque, nice.
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