Published June 13, 2009
Inside this wood I keep pocket universes, in tins, collected
Dried, infused, divided, labeled. Poetry.
First a category sings, Green, Black, White, Oolong,
And becomes a voyager’s lullaby:
Sisters
Sikkim and
Darjeeling, Cousin Assam
is a monsoon, thick soil, weathered,
sand, pocketed breeches,
bracing malt for the
New Day;
The Earl
bartered with a mandarin,
exchanged secrets about the oil of
bergamot and Ceylon. His Lady marked
with subtlety, infused a
lighter shade;
Lapsang
spun in dragon’s
breath, catching the back of the
throat. Suchong-smoke of the
pines, high and hiding
In the valley
Mist;
Petals opened
their gentle mouths to the
night. Lay fresh over the green,
breathed on the leaves and traced
Jasmine inside each packet,
waiting to
exhale;
And the whitest,
with the promise of healing,
Young shoots left pale, and weakest
in water. Budding children
softest and pure;
The paper words become glass,
A spyglass for unfamiliar breath-stealing homes,
Doused in names, heritage, age-old knowledge;
I am a Bard-
Rat in Venice, mouse inside a
mahogany panel wall,
A mosquito flitting
through nets and
banana leaves,
A cockerel, looking up
through bamboo bars.
I am displaced in year and settle into foreign trees.
---
Really want to make this the best it can be! Its something ive wanted to write about for a while now, its all about the imagery...
Please be harsh with crit!
(=
UPDATE: Changed the structure now, think it works a lot better. Crit?
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139,660 Literary Works • 672,645 Reviews
Hello,
I have to say this piece pleased me deep inside and I'm quite glad you wrote it. I believe it's better than you can realize, yourself being the writer. A very lovely poem.
I fell deep into each realm, method, flavor. Maybe it's because drinking tea is such a ritual for me, but I thought this beautiful and full. A very vast poem.
I think the format after the line:
"The paper words become glass,"
Should be more strait forward, not like each of the tea worlds.
I'm going to review longer later, I've got to up and run.
Well the different worlds idea is right, its about small worlds WITHIN the world, but if you're still confused. research!
Type green, white, black, oolong into google and see what you get! search earl and Ceylon, and find out for yourself!
(=
Ok, am rly confused with this. I know it's probably because I can't understand :~
But I LOVED the imagery in this poem, at the start you said
"Inside this wood I keep pocket universes"
then that sort of raindrop symmetry made me think of different worlds, different poems...ect
anyway, correct me if i've got the wrong end of the stick
Ah tea, my first love =] Very much a fan of this poem. Positive poems are always a plus!
So, you ask for a harsh critique but I can’t seem to do it because this is wonderful (at least as far as the imagery goes) and it has a wonderful, very magical sound. The description is beautiful and more than anything, the idea is so wonderful.
This is probably one of my favorite lines in the poem because it is so simple. There is one thing that I don’t like and that is the fact that the adjectives don’t match and I would probably change it to soft and pure.
However, I have to say that I’m not the best with punctuation in poetry so I don’t really know whether or not there are in fact any problems in here. Wait for one of the better reviewers to show up and you’ll most definitely get a better opinion there.
Overall, at least from my opinion, this is very good and I really do enjoy the image that it gives as well as the idea. *gold star for ‘Gold Tins’*