Thursday, February 11, 2010

Runaways

Run away with me.

We’ll drive down roads
with old stone walls.
We’ll close our eyes
by waterfalls,
and listen.

You’ll show me how to skim a stone
and how to pick the perfect one.
I’ll catch the icy river ripples,
frozen like February in my phone.

We’ll walk through woods
with secret seats,
that whisper words
like poetry.

And then we’ll climb through crumbling castles,
on stairs that wind through distant times,
to watch the world from a stony view,
to see anew with ancient eyes.

And at the end of our adventure,
when reality returns in shivery slivers,
we’ll hide in the shadow of the unicorn without a horn
and rest our winter-sun scorched eyes.
And as his colour fades
so will the light from our secret day.

In darkness we’ll drive back
To cul-de-sacs and damp and debt,
We’ll crawl into our bed
And dream of freedom.

1 comment:

steven.nash82 said...

Beautiful poem. Very sweet but you manage to avoid the slope into slushy.

The freedom of the form mirrors the whole idea of freedom which weaves through the piece. You show your skill and experience by moving the perspective from the somewhat distant and abstract roads and waterfalls into the specific activity of skimming stones.

The internal rhyme is great in this one, and the repetitive sounds make the poem so musical without ever sounding forced. It's got a real pulse to it.

There's pleasure and humour in the poem's tone although it maintains a kind of quiet, otherwordly tranquility. There is more stillness than action, as if describing a dream landscape rather than a human event. The emotions are contained within images themselves and there is a sense that there is something of the dissociative feeling of dreams - as though the emotions seething below the surface were cloaked in a blanket of drugged calm.

It all just feels right.

x