This is Your Life

 XX by nwolc

MP3 File

A wood. All branches bare, except for the hundreds
of tiny lizards hanging by their tails, crooked legs stretched
out, tiny hands reaching, bodies swaying in the almost
visible breeze, black limbs, white sky, then

a meadow, tall grasses, wildflowers, a wooden chair
standing in the meadow, many-times-painted many
colors, layer after layer, year after year, weather-crackled,
bubbled, chipped and paled. You see him, Weather,

an old craftsman in worn coveralls, bent over the chair,
carefully working away with ancient tools, carving that
valued antique patina, as if it had stood, unprotected
in a grassy meadow, season after season, and

now a vast lawn, green grass thick and mowed and
made for croquet. A man sits in the grass beneath a tattered
useless umbrella, no shield from rain, no guard from sun,
with its broken spines and ribboned cloth. The man sits cross-

legged, the man with the head of a kangaroo sits on the
croquet lawn, he hears the crack! of the mallet, the distant
plummy voices arguing, exclaiming, laughing, and when
you wake you still hear them, laughing.

  

    read write image #17 (now known as read write prompt #81)

    Totally Optional Prompt: Weather

[I sneaked in and did a little editing; will come back later and redo the audio. That gasp you hear was kitten jumping from the bookcase onto my shoulder. I thought I recovered fairly well?]

Comments

[angie]

wow!

I love the personification of 'Weather'! The whole piece has a sort of alice-in-wonderland feel to it! nice.

[Donald Harbour]

Good, I really liked the connection between nature, the artifice of weather, and human inability to cope with both. Great!

[Nathan]

I love the progression from "a wood" to "a vast lawn" -- wonderful.

[gautami tripathy]

I like the magical/fantasy feel it evokes!

equus asinus asinus

[Linfas Jacobs]

This sparked my brain! Love what you did with it!

[Kristy]

wow, I really loved this, it pulled me in and I love the 'plummy voices arguing' line - not sure what plummy voices are, but they sounded thick, sweet and syrupy...

[Tumblewords]

Particularly vivid and interesting weather/human juxtaposition. Nice work - enjoyed the reading, as well!

[Mark's Notebook]

This makes me wish I'd written it.

It was that good.

[sister AE]

There is some great language in this. I'm particularly fond of "broken spines and ribboned cloth."

[Dana]

This poem has a cinematographic quality to it, where as a reader i felt as if I was panning from scene to scene, almost floating over this wonderful landscape you have created.

[sbpoet]

Thank you all for your comments. This was *really* fun to do. And when it was done and posted, I went to Totally Optional Prompts to see what the prompt was there for this week -- and, yay! I already wrote that poem!

[James]

"Plummy voices" really grabbed me too. It's such a rich phrase. I also really like the detailed personification of Weather and his attention to his entropic work.