Winter Walk

Started by Ciannait, October 26, 2010, 11:38:33 PM

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Ciannait

A free-form poem type thing I wrote for my AP English class about five years ago. I'm not really happy with the title, but otherwise, I'm fairly pleased with it. It was done as a starting project to the novel "Ethan Frome" by Edith Wharton, and it was supposed to be a meditation on the word 'grim'. It turned into something quite different, but that's all right.

Walking through the meadow
snow crunches under my feet
like so many old bones.
Winter has come,
with it's endless white and chilling cold.
The tree skeletons reach up their bony fingers,
beseeching the sky for warmth
and sunlight.
But Mother Nature does not hear.
She too is sleeping
beneath the white canopy of snow.
All the world is endless white
and curtains of gray.
The only color
comes from the evergreens,
with their silent promise
that spring will come again.

But now,
winter seems as endless
as the white expanse before me.
Winters such as these
can freeze a man's soul;
yet for women they hold
a different bitterness -
a reminder that we
will eventually be
as barren as the land
in late December.

With every step this grim reminder
is hammered into the very marrow of our bones.
We know that, eventually,
we will see the evergreens,
and know their promises are not for us.
We will have become the Crone,
in the last stages of our existence.
We may be bitter and jaded, or
loving and kind -
yet we will all be the same woman in the end,
before the Grim Reaper carries us beyond.

Walking through the meadow,
snow crunching under my feet,
I walk the path of my mother,
and my grandmother before.
Someday, I will be them,
hardened by the life  that I now hold so dear.
But not yet -
for I am still an evergreen,
and the spring is coming.

Still, the endless winter beats at me
and causes my thoughts to be bleak,
and the snow under my feet
too sounds like the crunching of bones
and the breaking
of dreams.
Giles: You have responsibilities that other girls do not.
Buffy: Oh! I know this one! Slaying entails certain sacrifices, blah blah biddy blah, I'm so stuffy, give me a scone.
Giles: It's as if you know me.

Imogen

I like it quite a lot.

The flow is smooth and you can read it aloud without faltering. It paints a vivid image, the metaphore with winter works and is consistent throughout the poem.

I think I'd have liked it a little more without the final paragraph, turning the meaning of the poem around (what can I say? I like happy endings!), but as it stands it works too in an entirely different meaning.

Thank you for sharing this!

Imogen
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