Recumbent, he looks down

[David]

The room is Spartan, windowless and small.
A clock is making faces on the wall.
Left alone, until the doctor comes
to catalogue my history and symptoms,
I fall to contemplation of my feet,
my comely ankles and my slender calves,
that have conducted me through Skye and Crete
to Etna’s slopes and San Francisco’s wharves.
And then my shoes, each one a battered friend
that might go with me to the world’s end,
and then I think about them on the day
they will go on without me, in a way.
(And yes, how sadly typical of me,
these intimations of morbidity. )

[jisbell00]

Hi David,

I do hope this is not something serious and topical. I'm a cancer survivor myself, so this all speaks to me, but that was eleven years ago.

As for the poetry, I continue to find your rhyming couplets marry the subject matter very neatly. It is a sustained narrative, and I now imagine future instalments. May they document a full and speedy recovery!

I'd go ahead and say mortality at the end, morbidity for me has a slightly different meaning.

Cheers,
John

[CalebPerry]

I really like this, David. I'm not going to give a critique now because I'm tired and need to sleep, but the flow of the poem is great. I'll say more later. Rhyme too!

[CalebPerry]

David, I got up and started reading this poem again, and I think it's absolutely fabulous. I don't remember your poetry from before, but it seems to me that you must be having a break-out moment in which your talent is gelling. This really is a perfect poem. I just love it. You are producing very good stuff.

[nash]

You know (I hope) that I've always liked your work, David. It's elegant and charming, and these new ones are no different. Beautiful!

Having said that, it might just be me, but does the rhythm go slightly astray in L4?

Looking forward to reading the rest in the series.

[ray miller]

Very good. Again. A clock is making faces on the wall. - just a simple line, but I love it. Like Nash, I think there's a problem with the metre in line 4 and also the rhyme, comes/symptoms. I wonder if ...the doctor arrives/appears...gives you better options.

[David]

Thanks John. This was just a test - quite a rigorous one - and I am just (well, not quite just) a drama queen. The results might have required me to undergo some sort of operation but, happily, I have them now and it seems that that won't be necessary. A nice pre-Christmas buck-up. Glad you're liking the cut of this particular jib of mine.

That's very nice of you, Caleb. Glad you like it.

I don't remember your poetry from before, but it seems to me that you must be having a break-out moment in which your talent is gelling.

I don't think that's what's happening, though. What is really happening, just now, is that I have returned to my first great love in poetry, which is rhyming couplets. I blame this, read first at an impressionable age (probably about 12) ... https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.u ... chinvar-2/

John, Ray, thank you very much too. I agree with you about L4 - it seems a bit bumpy at the end to me too - but oddly enough they didn't give me a lot of grief about it at the Eratosphere (or my Facebook poetry group). I think the poem can stand a little disruption like that.

Also - and this only occurred to me afterwards - I could make a case for the effect as, being a sort of missed beat, or maybe an extra one, it is quite a faithful representation of a heart condition. How's that for post-hoc rationalisation?

Cheers all

David

[jisbell00]

Glad you're OK. That is a welcome Xmas gift! And you do write elegant rhyming couplets - your first love wasn't wrong.

Cheers,
John

[CalebPerry]

Rhyming couplets -- I'll have to try them. Alicia Stallings does them a lot. It must make it easier to rhyme, as the work of rhyming two lines is over quickly, and then you move on to the next.

[David]

Rhyming couplets -- I'll have to try them. Alicia Stallings does them a lot. It must make it easier to rhyme, as the work of rhyming two lines is over quickly, and then you move on to the next.

That's exactly it, Caleb. And they're fun. Give them a go.

Cheers

David

[David]

Glad you're OK. That is a welcome Xmas gift! And you do write elegant rhyming couplets - your first love wasn't wrong.

Cheers,
John

Thanks for that, John.

David

[jisbell00]

John

Here's a random little bit of Pope:

’Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill;
But, of the two, less dang’rous is th’ offence
To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.
Some few in that, but numbers err in this,
Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss;
A fool might once himself alone expose,
Now one in verse makes many more in prose.
’Tis with our judgments as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own..

[Macavity]

The ending appeals to my sense of humour. L2 is fun too. The battered friend is a super line. Enjoyed.