The Tangled Branch Discussion Forums

In Sicily
rust, bubbles decay 
in a different way.
There's a direction to it,
I think it tells me to look closer
through the rotting bars
of my hotel balcony.
And between a few empty Moretti bottles
life stutters below.
It passes in and out of view, like
1920's hand cranked movies.
Lovers rust different here too.
Their extended, unashamed
and passionate dramas, like
the operetta on our last night
are there for all to see.
Even the Mediterranean sea bulged
just yards behind them,
smashed huge waves on the short beach
so loud I couldn't hear.
And yet,
everything we saw 
suggested we should keep listening.


   


 

 

Lovely Colm. I've been to Sicily and the poem was like revisiting.

cheers

Phil

Thanks Phil 

I always like your "travelogue" poems Colm, there is inevitably an implied meaning in your "being elsewhere" take. This is no exception, I love the ending lines thinking the process of discernment of our personal values isn't easy in the noise and sense of displacement (even though by chioce and for enjoyment) grows more difficult in this world.

I love the deep (and sometimes much deeper) way you look into my stuff L.
And often wake up the next day hoping you've commented...good or bad 
because I have a short attention span, and am occasionally at a loss as to WTF
I was really trying to say...with or without my liquid Muse.
This began on the first night on a balcony, watching the waves gently lap the beach 
across the road...and the rust seemed to different to Irish rust. Probably didn't...
but that's how it struck me, so I scribbled those few lines on my phone.

The wind picked up towards the end of the holiday, the waves were huge and very loud
because we were so close to the beach; and I witnessed a prolonged lovers argument.
I was struck (charmed) by the passive nature of their struggle, the way the waves seemed to 
conspire to deny my voyeuristic instinct to listen to their voices, and the way neither of them
wanted to end the conversation/relationship.
A public display in Northern Europe tends to be less gentle.

It was...a lesson in love. And a reminder that there are other ways to live life...if we listen.
Or something like that.

And the opera thing was so fab 


   

Nice write, brims with whimsical authenticity. Enjoyed the read and skillful ending.

The poem works best when the verbs are strong and is weakest when it is weighted down by modifiers IMO.

Dave

Thanks for the read and comments Dave.

This is quite the set of observations to share with the reader.  And there is so much understated poetry in the lines.  

The rusting as a metaphor works wonderfully, as well as the incomplete nature of viewing life events through balcony balusters, as if an old-time hand-crank movie.  There is a bond between narrator and reader involving the shared anticipated privacy invasion.

A couple of thoughts:

L.2 – the comma seems inappropriate

L.5 – consider how it reads without “I think”

L.8 – “And between a few empty Moretti bottles”

A stanza break following L.11 might be considered.

Perhaps L.21 and 22 could be combined.  It would reduce the [overly] dramatic emphasis on “yet”, thus balancing the poem's conclusion, and coincidentally give the poem two eleven line stanzas, if you do choose to break stanza following L.11.  

Just my thoughts – use or loose.

Cheers.

T