Line Break Limbo
If this were a poem, where would YOU put the line breaks?
I wake to creamsicle dawn melting over the ridgeline of the Black Mountains, sugar foam pours down carved drainages into the cup of the earth. The day is warm already, rhododendron leaves unfurled and expectant, summoning spring and all her petals. The imposition of such weather like a hot iron stake stabbed through the gut of winter. Three weeks ago there were ice flows on the South Toe, chunky green and silver like layers of fish skin across the glassy surface of the river. Where are my powdered sugar snow mornings, when instead I wake to make tracks down the thicket, criss-crossing the pocked pattern of hare and hound into the silent ground?
Leave a Comment
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
I wake to creamsicle dawn melting
over the ridgeline of the Black Mountains, sugar
foam pours down carved drainages into the cup
of the earth. The day is warm already,
rhododendron leaves unfurled and expectant, summoning
spring and all her petals.
The imposition of such weather
like a hot iron stake stabbed through the gut
of winter.
Three weeks ago
there were ice flows on the South Toe,
chunky green and silver like layers
of fish skin across the glassy surface of the river.
Where are my powdered sugar snow mornings,
when instead I wake
to make tracks down the thicket, criss-crossing
the pocked pattern of hare and hound into the silent ground?
Wow, it is really hard to do that with someone else’s work (and harder still in a wee comment box)! I didn’t change anything but line breaks, though I felt like with line breaks, some of the commas could go, and I really wanted to take out the ‘snow’ in the last stanza, leave it sugar.
I think I did a lousy job, but I am a fictionist. We’re allowed to be lousy at poetry. It’s one of the perks!
I wake to creamsicle
dawn melting over the ridgeline
of Black Mountains, sugar
foam pours down carved drainages
into the cup of the earth.
The day is warm already:
rhododendron leaves
unfurled and expectant, summoning
spring and all
her petals. The imposition of such
weather like a hot iron stake
stabbed through the gut of winter.
Three weeks ago
there were ice flows on the South Toe,
chunky green and silver like
layers of fish skin across
glassy surfaces of the river.
Where are my powdered sugar snow
mornings, when instead
I wake to make tracks
down the thicket, criss-crossing
the pocked pattern of hare
and hound into the
silent ground?
very cool challenge Katey. you’ll have to tell me where you’da put them. : )
bk
oh – and I took out a “the” so it didn’t start a line – but I wanted a break after a certain word, but didn’t want to start a line with “the”…