In the park, we decided to do
as the Romans do - chessboard
sprawled out on the table, pieces
weakly glittering in the noonday sun.
And I stopped my timer
to say "check" -
she looked away, said
that I'd already lost,
and she'd continued playing
out of courtesy.
Then we skipped stones in the pond:
She managed nine hops to the other shore,
and my rock went three hops
before it struck a goose that then flew at my face,
only deflected by a lucky shot from her.
Then we ate lunch underneath the trees
when the ants didn't carry away my soda
and the birds didn't land on her shoulders
while she peered into a book
on the future of man in space.
And she didn't seem to know,
despite how much the sun
wrapped in a halo around her face,
that she sat next to the man
who had gone there, and been frozen
into silence by the journey, desperately
as he had tried
to outdo Icarus.
Points:
Time spent:
IP address:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
139,688 Literary Works • 672,649 Reviews
Radrook here for a review.
I enjoyed reading this poem because of the pace, imagery and the drama it creates by having everything go wrong for the speaker while the person being referred to as she seems blessed. He loses at chess. She wins. He loses at skipping stones. She wins. Having lunch is an issue since the ants and birds seem to conspire against him while she remains unmolested. In short, the fellow seems to be jinxed.
So as a reader I assured that the poem was about the irony involved in the good luck or good fortune that some people have who seem to be favored by th gods, or God as it were as opposed to those who seem to turn everything they touch into manure.
So I was surprised to learn that it is about a silence imposed by having gone to the moon and having returned in a state of silence because of committing the sin of hubris. Not that this isn't a good concept. In fact, it is a fascinating concept which even makes it amenable to becoming a great short story. But just as that short story should display the astronaut's symptoms of inability to communicate or profound silence, so should the poem in order for the conclusion to dovetail with the rest of what had been shown.
This poem is simply beautiful. I'm a sucker for the quiet, nostalgic beauty that you captured so eloquently. Also, I'm a huge sucker for Greek Mythology, so I of course loved the reference to Icarus.
I'm curious about the title, but that's just me. I really couldn't find any mistakes, so I guess this isn't much of a review, but here it is.
If I remember correctly/understand my sources well enough, 0-1 is chess notation for a loss. But yeah, I'm happy to see you liked everything, especially the reference - thanks for the review!