Dust

by Bittersweet

  • Poetry
  • Other

Published August 22, 2010

Spoiler! :
In my English class, we read the poem "Abandoned Farmhouse" by Ted Kooser. We were told to mimic the poem using things in/around our house to describe us. This is what I came up with.


Dust


She was careless, says the gathered dust
on the window sill of the second floor;
a forgetful girl, say the rings of the absent jars
in the pantry; and a painter,
say the stains on the floor, hidden under a patterned rug;
but not a girl for company, says the jewelry box
with unworn pearls and neglect.

She was often alone, say the halls,
littered with music and the piano notes
warped with time and she pretended to like the loneliness,
say the books on the shelves, worn with use.
Times had been better, say the photos in the photo albums
and the porch swing swaying in the backyard,
and the days were long, say the tangled sheets in the bedroom.
There were many sleepless nights, says the bedside lamp.

She painted flying things, say the colour-tipped brushes
on the desk. The birds in the tree say she wished to be airbourne,
the plugged bathtub drain says she was sinking.
And the girl? The milky water in the bathtub
like discarded dreams -- a bird in flight, the sun blinking from under waves,
the flickering light up above? She was drowning, they say.

Comments & reviews · 4
User avatar
stargazer9927
Review
stargazer9927 wrote a review Review · Aug 25, 2010

I really liked this poem. I'm not a huge fan of poetry that I can't really understand, and that's most poetry in general. I guess I can understand it but it just doesn't click so I don't get it's meaning. I liked yours because you gave it the amazing characteristics of poetry but at the same time made it something you would want to read and can understand. I understood it perfectly but I could still see the poetry. If more people wrote poetry like that, I would like it and read it a lot more often.

User avatar
simplycomplex
Review
simplycomplex wrote a review Review · Aug 22, 2010

I like this better than Ted Kooser's poem. And your English class sounds better than mine, all we do is read poems and never get to write any.

She was often alone, say the halls,
littered with music and the piano notes
warped with time and she pretended to like the loneliness,
say the books on the shelves, worn with use.

In the part in red I think it would sound better to put a comma after "time" so the words don't run together from what's in the halls to what the books start saying.

Good work on this, I really like it!

User avatar
Button
Review
Button wrote a review Review · Aug 22, 2010

I read the description and inwardly groaned.

But this was excellent. The imagery you created with simple phrases was very well done.. beautiful wording, nice descriptions. The ending was great. Thoroughly enjoyable piece.

Thank you for pleasantly surprising me. :)

User avatar
Isaac
Review
Isaac wrote a review Review · Aug 22, 2010

I like this, you get a really good feel for who this person was, and what their life was like. You manage to get across a story for this person.
I like how you used details about her home to show what she was like, and what happened to her. You are also able to get the emotions across without being over dramatic about it.
There was one place where the correlation between the detail and the point you wanted to get across, didn't match up very clearly. Least to me, that is.

and the days were long, say the tangled sheets in the bedroom.
There were many sleepless nights, say the stains on her pillow.


I hope this helped, good work so far.



Uh, Lisa, the whole reason we have elected officials is so we don't have to think all the time. Just like that rainforest scare a few years back: our officials saw there was a problem and they fixed it, didn't they?
— Homer Simpson