A Villanelle Written in Fishing Terms
Drifting lonely on the quiet seas,
I hope for your return to this loch,
but life is only catch-and-release.
Others, too, paddle to these
sighing waters. They cast their lot,
Drifting lonely on the quiet seas.
Some, mourning the long-deceased,
seek to bend the cosmic clocks,
but life is only catch-and-release.
I remember your white arm; we swam each
to our own green, mossy rock,
drifting lonely on the quiet seas.
And then, with sudden and with wordless ease,
you left me by my cheerless dock.
Life is only catch-and-release.
Still I circle without cease
these desolate, grey-naked rocks,
drifting lonely on the quiet seas,
but life is only catch-and-release.
1 comment:
I would love to hear your read this aloud.
There's something about the rhythm and the words you chose to have rhyming the whole way through that works really well. I think it's the swish of the s sounds sandwiching the "ock" lines. It sounds like the flow of water interrupted by the plop of something falling in or jumping out, which is then swept away like it never happened. Which is what I took the poem to be about in the first place - a woman whose life was interrupted by a moment of romance only to have it go away again.
The sense of waiting and anticipation was also great - there was a wonderful tension in the timing. Having the sound of the center lines feel like the ticking of a clock, with every second drifting away, made it a really beautiful snapshot of something that feels timeless. We all live in That Moment of memory to some extent, and even if we change what it is we think about most, we constantly have the pull of nostalgia for a time and place we'd rather be in, and a person we'd rather be with.
Also the focus of water imagery was great because it's such an oxymoron of an object: it is in constant flux, never staying the same, and yet always the same in its changing. So it doubly builds on that metaphor to get the sense of hopelessly clinging to what's already gone. The repetition of lines worked well for that too.
In all, I really love it. It's quiet and understated in that way that at first glance it seems so simple, but when you look longer you see all the beauty of how it's seemlessly crafted together.
Post a Comment