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Phoebus
I saw the sun catch in your hair,
Your silhouette against the glare.
I heard your laughter rise and fall
And shatter in the frozen air.
The sun sank down behind the trees
Yet brighter suns burned in your eyes.
You set the darkened woods agleam
With secret fires that no one sees.
You strung the banners of the dawn,
A pink and fiery denouement.
I wrapped myself in dried-up leaves
And with the silent trees looked on.
.
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L.M. Shearer is a teacher from the Pacific Northwest.
Beautiful! With greater attention to meaning and rhythm than rhyme, but with quality rhyme nonetheless. As poet, the word “that” in line 8 would still keep me wondering: should it be “fires that no one sees” or “fires no one sees”? Which would be best? You can argue both ways. Excellent work!
Thank you, Kevin!
What a fun conundrum. I think it depends on whether you say “fires” with one syllable or two. In my west coast accent, “fires” is one syllable, so I need “that” to be the unstressed syllable in the line. But if you had a sort of drawl and said “fi-yars” that would slightly alter the rhythm of the line. The joys of dialect!
I’m late to getting around to reading this, but it’s lovely. I truly enjoyed it!
What marvellous imagery. And very exact in it’s form and line lengths.
Beautiful, especially in its unified light imagery. Also, I love the laughter shattering in the frozen air — what an intriguing description!
It IS a lovely poem. I love the final line also.
Light, sound, motion, warmth, and color feature in this drama of Phoebus. The speaker who experiences it claims to be silent and wrapped in dried up leaves, surely an inadequate covering. Intriguing contrast!
A delightful love poem that is interesting in not comparing its object to the sun, but noting the effects of the sunlight on her/him. Rhyming “denouement” with “on” was also a nice touch.
It was a joy to read your delightful poem, L.M. Thank you for sharing it.