House and Garden

From a poetry workshop.

House & Garden


in the shadows
after the dishes
before the night cap

sitting in the house
viewing the garden

snow drifts
insulate

our slumbering bulbs
as we keep vigil
as ever we did.

This was the product of a workshop on love poems by Giles Benaway. Giles distributed three poems: Sonnet XVIII "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" by William Shakespeare with its polysemic play with "fair" as both "just" and as "beautiful"; "Having a Coke with You" by Frank O'Hara with its accumulative repetition of "partly" leading us to know that the subject is not exhausted; "Poem About Your Laugh" by Susan Glickman with its mastery of metaphor in the service of unfolding some far out conceits.

Giles asked us to compose a piece from 5 to 10 lines, no rhymes and no words ending in "ly". So I produced a few lines on domestic hibernation with a tinge of melancholy.

And so for day 1139
25.01.2010