I would like to dedicate yesterday’s sunset to somebody I knew called Gareth (he wasn’t a poet) and apologies but there is no dancing in this either – thanks for your comments if you have any …
this evening the sun is an everlasting gobstopper
under a raspberry ripple sky
which wraps the earth in ribbons of red promises
woven into song by a choir of swallows
how small we are when we lose ourselves in the sky
for a moment I am back at school
in the playground somebody is showing off
with half a pomegranate from home
too big to hold in his hand
he eats it with a pin
bit by bit
seed by seed
and I am thinking to myself why bother?
over time I have met men like that
they want to see the future
tease it open
dissect it
study it
count it
like a child picking petals off a daisy one by one
but there are others who prefer putting things together
searching for ways to fix that unfixable problem
using gadgets with gobbledegook names
sharing tips and biscuits
leaving crumbs
bits of sticky tape
and that very important screw that they forgot to put back
Lovely poem, Sarah. I love all the close up images of seeds and crumbs and sticky tape, especially zooming in on them from the vastness of the sky.
I’m wondering if you can tighten up the first stanza a bit. Maybe lose ‘this evening’ as sunset is in the title; ‘wrapping’ instead of ‘which wraps’. Don’t really know why. The ‘how small we are’ line is a stunner.
Not sure you need the daisy metaphor as it was the pomegranate that led us into those images of dissect and study and count.
Perhaps using the name ‘Gareth’ in the title leads us to expect more about him in the poem.
As I said, a very enjoyable visual poem.