The Quiet Red Head on the Bus (Is Observed by the Quiet Brunette)
Last updated on May 6, 2010
I wonder what roves in her red-head
As the terrain motionlessly passes
Houses with peeling paint and forgotten copses
A gallery of thin, thin trees
Does it correlate with what roves in mine?
As I seek a fence or mailbox
That I’ve never seen before
To deliberately feel amusement
Over having been evaded
Innumerable rides before
Or does her seemingly steady gaze, only glaze
As she paints a dinner table that I’ll never know
In her red-head
On pearl-slit neck…
For all that I’ll never know
She eats in bed with a plate on her lap
And I’ll miss that ensconced shed every time
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Lauren I. Ruiz. Lauren I. Ruiz said: http://lacewords.com/blog/the-quiet-red-head My favorite poem of mine. It's not perfect yet though. [...]
this is very nice. my personal wish is always to reduce to the minimum number of words, so trying to locate what you might not need:
could ‘i wonder’ go? that ‘and’ in line 3? not sure the double ‘thin’ adds anything to the meaning. ‘slender’? or some such?
second stanza, do you need ‘that’ in line 7? in line 10 you’ve got a second ‘before’, coming quite soon after that in line 7. could lines 9 and 10 be conflated into something like: ‘At its innumerable previous evasions’? and maybe ‘That I’ve never seen before’ be added to the previous line as ‘unnoticed’?
third stanza, again i wanted a ‘that’ to go. and you’ve got ‘I’ll never know’ here and again in the next stanza. replace the first with ‘private’?
fourth stanza, another ‘that’ to go – a very experienced female poet once told me ‘that’ is always superfluous. so wondering about something like the following as a slightly tightened version:
What roves in her red-head
As the terrain motionlessly passes
Houses with peeling paint, forgotten copses
A gallery of slender trees
Does it correlate with what roves in mine
As I seek an unnoticed fence or mailbox
To deliberately feel amusement
At its countless previous evasions
Or does her seemingly steady gaze
Only glaze
As she paints a private dinner table
In her red-head
On pearl-slit neck…
For all I know
She eats in bed with a plate on her lap
And I’ll miss that ensconced shed every time