Weather or Not (synesthesia poetry challenge)
A few years in, it occurred to me
I had married a mountain.
I mistook rigidity for strength,
immovability for loyalty.
With shocking speed, your winds would shift,
one moment temperate, the next bitter,
your anger an icy gale that slashed.
I could never see it coming;
there was no forecast.
I learned to find what shelter I could
Until it passed.
Your shouts were an avalanche.
I threw up my arms to protect my head,
sometimes lobbing missiles back,
often fleeing to more stable ground.
Alarmed, I’d snatch the baby from her crib,
my torso curving into a shell to shield her,
and run outside. You followed, bellowing
that I was the crazy one.
At the word “abuse”
you were confused, saying
I never laid a hand on her.
You didn’t see the rocks you threw,
nor the cuts they made.
How could I have thought
a stone could see?
It was against your nature.
I left when I recognized
that it would be madness
to try to change the weather.
Poetry writing prompt: Incorporate synesthesia
I had married a mountain.
I mistook rigidity for strength,
immovability for loyalty.
With shocking speed, your winds would shift,
one moment temperate, the next bitter,
your anger an icy gale that slashed.
I could never see it coming;
there was no forecast.
I learned to find what shelter I could
Until it passed.
Your shouts were an avalanche.
I threw up my arms to protect my head,
sometimes lobbing missiles back,
often fleeing to more stable ground.
Alarmed, I’d snatch the baby from her crib,
my torso curving into a shell to shield her,
and run outside. You followed, bellowing
that I was the crazy one.
At the word “abuse”
you were confused, saying
I never laid a hand on her.
You didn’t see the rocks you threw,
nor the cuts they made.
How could I have thought
a stone could see?
It was against your nature.
I left when I recognized
that it would be madness
to try to change the weather.
Poetry writing prompt: Incorporate synesthesia
I really liked how this called back to the mountain: How could I have thought
ReplyDeletea stone could see?
Missiles and shell ... Asked out of place with all the mountain weather themes.
I like how you used "my baby" and not "our baby" to show the chasm between them.
I thought this was beautiful. I think that the missiles and shell work, because they are describing her, while he is the weather, but that's just my opinion. Great job!
ReplyDeleteYou describe a relationship gone sour so well using the weather elements.
ReplyDeleteLoved the strong opening metaphor. I thought you used synesthesia to full advantage. I agree with Tara that there were a few word choices that felt out of place. "Missiles" stuck out to me because the poem was so successful using vocabulary from nature up to that point. I thought the similes could be tightened up some. Is he a mountain or the weather? Have you heard of the rain shadow effect? It's the arid climate that results on the eastern side of mountains near oceans. The mountains stop the wind from bringing rain clouds over to the far side. I feel like that idea could tie your metaphors together nicely.
ReplyDeleteGreat comments as always, thanks guys!
ReplyDeleteI really loved the mountain metaphor, and the synesthesia is so evident. The weather metaphor worked in part for me, since I reconciled it as the weather patterns at the top of peaks. I wanted you to carry the metaphor even further too (like Tara and Nate)--so instead of 'missiles', you lob 'snowballs' in response to the 'avalanche' of words, and curling your body into a cave to protect the baby. I wanted to see the words tumbling down onto her, to see her throw up her arms to protect her head from them. Where he follows her outside, the first thing that came to my mind was "oh! So the mountain does indeed come to Mohammed"--and I think that would be an image that could easily be incorporated. At the end, I wanted the weather (his mental turmoil/incapacity to understand that what he was doing was abuse) to be quite deliberately placed at the top of the mountain (him) to carry that metaphor all the way through.
ReplyDelete