Not till never

By well-wisher

Tue, 12 Aug 2014
  • 378 reads
1 comments
 

When, off the page, these printed words

leap and turn into hummingbirds

and fly three times round Saturn too;

that’s the day I’ll stop loving you.

 

Or when this poem that you hold,

itself, into a flower, folds

and grows one hundred stories high;

that’s when my love for you will die.

 

But not till then, I promise you;

not till the stars turn into doves;

till the impossible is true

will ever end, for you, my love.

Certificate U
Poem
Poems
Love

Comments

Submitted by Geoff Smith on

This sounds like I'm being super nit picky so I'll preface it by saying that I really like this a lot. Your imagery is direct and powerful. The first verse confused me because surely the words are off the page when they are in my head, so am I killing the love by reading the poem? Also the positive, joyful images you create about words leaving the page doesn't fit with the death in line 4. In short, Line 4 needs changing.

Secondly, I wonder whether it might be better to have my love on its own in a final stanza. I think that this would highlight the powerful independence of love, but would also preserve the full rhyme at the end of stanza 3 and this would be more inkeeping with the direct power of your message. I notice though that you have changed the rhyme scheme in the final stanza from ciouplets to alternation which makes sense if you are trying to convey a change in the nature of the relationship. Was this a deliberate choice?

 

Thanks for reading. I am grateful for your time.