the road is wet when raining

by alliyah

"THE ROAD IS WET WHEN RAINING," the sign declares matter-of-factly for all those who have not yet discovered this particular direct correlation between rain and water. And I would scoff at their unknowing state of oblivion, except I know exactly how sometimes a storm causes you to lose track of all the simple realities we so often take for granted: The sky is bright when the sun is shining. The air is cool when the wind is blowing. The land green when the grass is growing. I am here when my feet are standing. We are alive when these lungs are moving. Yes, the road is wet when raining and I promise you, the sun will rise tomorrow; and the day after; and the day after that. Sometimes it is rather necessary, to state the obvious - if only until the clouds move, and we remember the sun again.

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Stickied -- Wed Sep 06, 2023 8:14 pm

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alliyah says...

Thank you for taking the time to read!

Please Note: This poem, like its sister poem here, is written in the form of prose poetry - meaning I intended to write this in a "prose-like" way formatted like a paragraph, rather than using conventional poetic formatting like line-breaks and stanza-breaks. Prose poetry does not necessarily need to adhere to the same grammatical conventions of your typical prose either.

Would love to know what you think; especially any interpretations.

Never stop reading and writing!

~ alliyah

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Thu Oct 19, 2023 8:07 pm

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GrHinds09 wrote a review...

I loved this poem. Sometimes saying the obvious is so important because it's so underlying that sometimes we forget. We can get lost in that in between, the time in between each sunrise or during the storm. So saying that helpful thing that might seem obvious can help so much because when your lost in your thoughts it helps. I thought this poem was really interesting and unique, with the formatting and the obvious messages that translate to something deeper.

Anyways hope you have a sunny day with dry roads and good company!

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Fri Sep 08, 2023 5:45 am

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Liminality wrote a review...

Hi alliyah! Lim here with a review!

General Thoughts and Interpretations

The impression I get from the poem is one of neutral observation in the first line or so, followed by a sense of confidence or hope. The ending line kind of loops back to a more observational tone with hedges like “sometimes”, “rather” and “i(f) only”

I think a couple of messages could be read from this poem. One is that there’s a lot going on that we don’t take notice of. That seems to be the central reading of a line like

sometimes a storm causes you to lose track of all the simple realities we so often take for granted

And the other is a more ‘calling’ angle which is that it says we *should* take notice of things even if they are ‘obvious’. The observational tone makes it hard to tell if the poem’s main intent is to persuade us of this, but the ‘argument’ certainly is there in this line:

Sometimes it is rather necessary, to state the obvious - if only until the clouds move, and we remember the sun again.

^ clouds and storms here seem to co-occur with chaos and obscurity, seeing how they hide the sun and the storm is said to cause someone to lose track of “simple realities”. So I interpreted the line as implying “to state the obvious” is a help against such things.

Likewise in the speaker’s promise that the sun will rise on subsequent days, reminders of certain regularities in life are depicted as uplifting.

Structure

Something I liked about the poem was the use of parallelisms and rhyme, especially in these three lines:

The sky is bright when the sun is shining. The air is cool when the wind is blowing. The land green when the grass is growing.

The introduction of end rhymes when there previously were none contrasts this part with the earlier lines about the storm. I think that helps to highlight the opposition of the more pleasant nature and weather imagery with that of the storms and clouds, which link to the poem’s argument that we should take notice of the simple and ‘obvious’ yet pleasant constants.

However, the use of the same sentence structure, “The [noun] is [adjective] when the [noun] is [verb]”, also highlights the fact that these are ‘simple/obvious’ things. The link back to the “road is wet” line in the beginning also creates cohesion in the poem.

Suggestions

I am here when my feet are standing. We are alive when these lungs are moving.

I felt like the human element in these lines didn’t feel like they meshed together with the rest of the poem, which seems to focus more on weather imagery or things in the surroundings, like grass or the road. Of course, that works just fine if you intend for these lines to stand out.

Another thought I had was that I didn’t quite see in the poem what it *means* to forget all the simple realities. What is it like to forget the sun, in concrete terms? It might enhance the impact of the last line if that juxtaposition between remembering and forgetting was elaborated on a little more.

Overall

The main technical thing I liked was the creativity of repurposing the road sign’s reminder in other parts of the poem, or at least preserving its syntactic structure. As for the effect of the whole piece, the poem leaves me wondering how much the speaker is committing to this need for reminders – are they fully into it or is it a “sometimes” thing? It is a short and sweet piece that ultimately makes one point, which could potentially expanded on but also works as it is.

Hope this helps – keep writing!
-Lim

alliyah says...

(Late reply) Thank you very much Lim! <3 Glad the repetition came across; good points on continuity and meaning, will definitely keep those things in mind!

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Thu Sep 07, 2023 4:15 am

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OrabellaAvenue wrote a review...

Hiya! This is Orabella, here to review!

I absolutely love this! Seriously! This is (one of) my favorite poems that I've read recently on YWS. It's written in an interesting way and it has a beautiful moral.

One thing I want to say: your transitions are flawless. This poem starts with a normal sign - one that people in rainy places see often. And then it transitions to other things that are obvious but still can be forgotten. And it continues like that for a while, transitioning from one thing to another, until we magically end up on this wonderful message to remember the sun. It's beautiful, I love it so much, and it's incredibly well done.

Sometimes it's hard to see what's in front of our own eyes. Sometimes things get in the way - cloud your judgement - and you can get lost down the crazy twisting paths of life.

Yeah, okay, I'm not sure if any of that make sense.

Point is, I love this poem and it's seriously so amazing. I love every aspect of it, including literally everything I didn't talk about.

Keep writing! The world deserves to hear and read your beautiful and unique poems!