She curled gnarled fingers around her copy of the poem. Over the many years that it remained folded and hidden within the darkness of the mitten, the single page of stationary lost its crisp edge and took on the softness of the faded red yarn. She kept the pair in the far corner of her top drawer, far away from the influence of an old lilac sachet tucked on the bottom. She only wore the mittens once a year, when she went for a walk along with her poem to face the sky. She kept her promise.
The color of love.
She recited the title quietly into the frigid night air, so still, the fog freezing her words lingered in front of her lips long enough her to walk through and dissipate over her shoulder. Though bundled in her formal coat, with the fur muffler and hand-knitted cap that looked so pretty with the crab stitching along the cuff, she didn’t feel the cold any more, she was too old. She hobbled and relied on a cane. Age added a pronounced limp to her gait. Bone rubbing on the bones of once shapely hips that held the knack to switch and bump as she slowly walked, all the while quite aware he stood in the back watching. He existed in her memory. Yet, in her recalling the curious way he crossed his arms and dropped his chin to hide a chuckle as he watched her saunter past, he still caused her to smile.
The color of love is white.
She poked her cane into a hardened clump of snow and listened to it crackle as she stepped on it. She had to wait a long time this year. Waiting for the winter winds to settle, selecting the blackest night to venture out for a stroll. It had to be as frigid and as still as the midnight she allowed him to kiss her nose. He sealed his warmth within her when he kissed her again, on her lips.
The color of lo...
... middle of paper ...
...e far end of her walk. Ever punctual, shoulders squared, fingers tight inside a pair of faded red mittens, gripping a cane and a poem, she faced the black sky against the snow. There, under the archway of cold, she set free a silent kiss. She watched it ricochet off the edge of time, follow constellations across the sky, exploding, raining frozen tears, and sparkling kisses upon his silent body.
The color of love is invisible.
He reached from the back wall of time, barely brushing the ends of her gray hair with fingertips of a sudden cold wind as she turned from the black, to return to the tranquility of her rooms, and tuck the poem deep in the mitten, replacing the pair in the corner of her top drawer, until the next still night.
The color of love is timeless.
And only the ghost of the sacrificed
Lover can understand the true hue.
The color of love is black.
"But at fifteen, I straightened my brows and laughed, Learning that no dust could ever seal our love, That even unto death I would await you by my post; And would never lose heart in the tower of silent watching." When the speaker turns sixteen, her husband sets off on a lengthy journey which made her worried as he hasn't come home for a while. "Your footprints by our door, where I had watched you go, Were hidden, every one of them, under green moss, Hidden under moss too deep to sweep away.
While walking downtown with her girlfriend, the author describes as, “[her] heart began to skip every other beat, pounding, pounding, pounding … [as she stood] paralyzed like a frightened, little jackrabbit.” Repetition of the word “pounding” in the text develops a fast pace, indicating the urgency and panic felt by the author; terms such as paralyzed are utilized to emphasize the urgent, panicked mood. However, sanguine moods still persist throughout the narrative. For example, in the opening paragraph the author describes how she, “watch[ed] the golden dots of morning light glide across [her] ceiling, [and she] melted into a feeling of peace specific to the freedom of early summer.” Terms such as “golden,” “glide,” “peace,” and “early summer” help the reader detect a placid mood in the text, directing the reader towards the state of contentment the author feels surrounding her relationship. Mood differentiations in the text, from the urgency of the narrator’s walk downtown to the tranquil peace of the narrator’s relationship, indicate the contrasting aspects of the LGBT+ community, both in terms of the impending fear of violence, and the love that is the
The timeline carries on chronologically, the intense imagery exaggerated to allow the poem to mimic childlike mannerisms. This, subjectively, lets the reader experience the adventure through the young speaker’s eyes. The personification of “sunset”, (5) “shutters”, (8) “shadows”, (19) and “lamplights” (10) makes the world appear alive and allows nothing to be a passing detail, very akin to a child’s imagination. The sunset, alive as it may seem, ordinarily depicts a euphemism for death, similar to the image of the “shutters closing like the eyelids”
The speaker’s rocky encounter with her ex-lover is captured through personification, diction, and tone. Overall, the poem recaps the inner conflicts that the speak endures while speaking to her ex-lover. She ponders through stages of the past and present. Memories of how they were together and the present and how she feels about him. Never once did she broadcast her emotions towards him, demonstrating the strong facade on the outside, but the crumbling structure on the inside.
...er emotional vulnerability send the reader on a mystery through a variety of people, places, and even time. With a quirky personality, the young heroine`s fearlessness and curiosity, on top of her excellent benefit of age sends her on an exceptional adventure while hints of familial love buried deep down begin to surface near the novel’s end. The poet, E.E. Cummings, is a sophisticated lover who speaks devotedly of his beloved and her mysterious power over him. With a loyal and passionate heart, the ardent poet marvels at the inner mystery, concluding that the mysteries of love and nature are best left alone because if one was to know precisely why they love another, some passion would be stolen. The curiosity, impetus, imagination, and bottomless passion in both narrators reveal that there is much more to mystery, adventure, and love than what meets the eye.
What is unusual about Pastan?s poem is the way she effectively conveys these sentiments by the
cold, harsh, wintry days, when my brothers and sister and I trudged home from school burdened down by the silence and frigidity of our long trek from the main road, down the hill to our shabby-looking house. More rundown than any of our classmates’ houses. In winter my mother’s riotous flowers would be absent, and the shack stood revealed for what it was. A gray, decaying...
...n seems to be the only thing that kept her together, and once is breaks, she does too. The end of the poem results in a finale of her knowledge, “And Finished knowing – then-“. At the end of both writings, the narrators’ self-awareness and realization explained their final actions.
The gentle early morning breeze blew across their faces like the whispering winds sway the trees. They had been walking all night long, and finally made it across the border. My mother’s hair was ruffled up, her nose had a steady trickle of blood running into her open mouth. She grunted softly as she lifted her hand up. Tears streamed down her eyes. She knew she had finally made it to her destination.
From the combination of enjambed and end-stopped lines, the reader almost physically feels the emphasis on certain lines, but also feels confusion where a line does not end. Although the poem lacks a rhyme scheme, lines like “…not long after the disaster / as our train was passing Astor” and “…my eyes and ears…I couldn't think or hear,” display internal rhyme. The tone of the narrator changes multiple times throughout the poem. It begins with a seemingly sad train ride, but quickly escalates when “a girl came flying down the aisle.” During the grand entrance, imagery helps show the importance of the girl and how her visit took place in a short period of time. After the girl’s entrance, the narrator describes the girl as a “spector,” or ghost-like figure in a calm, but confused tone. The turning point of the poem occurs when the girl “stopped for me [the narrator]” and then “we [the girl and the narrator] dove under the river.” The narrator speaks in a fast, hectic tone because the girl “squeez[ed] till the birds began to stir” and causes her to not “think or hear / or breathe or see.” Then, the tone dramatically changes, and becomes calm when the narrator says, “so silently I thanked her,” showing the moment of
“It was a large, beautiful room, rich and picturesque in the soft, dim light which the maid had turned low. She went and stood at an open window and looked out upon the deep tangle of the garden below. All the mystery and witchery of the night seemed to have gathered there amid the perfumes and the dusky and tortuous outlines of flowers and foliage. She was seeking herself and finding herself in just such sweet half-darkness which met her moods. But the voices were not soothing that came to her from the darkness and the sky above and the stars. They jeered and sounded mourning notes without promise, devoid even of hope. She turned back into the room and began to walk to and fro, down its whole length, without stopping, without resting. She carried in her hands a thin handkerchief, which she tore into ribbons, rolled into a ball, and flung from her. Once she stopped, and taking off her wedding ring, flung it upon the carpet. When she saw it lying there she stamped her heel upon it, striving to crush it. But her small boot heel did not make an indenture, not a mark upon the glittering circlet.
...ttachment or emotion. Again, Heaney repeats the use of a discourse marker, to highlight how vividly he remembers the terrible time “Next morning, I went up into the room”. In contrast to the rest of the poem, Heaney finally writes more personally, beginning with the personal pronoun “I”. He describes his memory with an atmosphere that is soft and peaceful “Snowdrops and Candles soothed the bedside” as opposed to the harsh and angry adjectives previously used such as “stanched” and “crying”. With this, Heaney is becoming more and more intimate with his time alone with his brother’s body, and can finally get peace of mind about the death, but still finding the inevitable sadness one feels with the loss of a loved one “A four foot box, a foot for every year”, indirectly telling the reader how young his brother was, and describing that how unfortunate the death was.
As I walked into the family room, I could feel the gentle heat of the crackling fire begin to sooth my frostbitten cheeks. I plopped myself down on the sofa. The soft cushions felt like heaven to my muscles, sore from building snowmen, riding sleds, and throwing snowballs from behind the impenetrable fort.
We have all had those memorable moments that send us back in time; a song on the radio, the smell of cookies baking, driving in the car. They make you think of good times passed. But Billy Collins’s poem, “The Lanyard”, is not only a recollection of the past, but a personal insight to about the things his mother has done for him and what he has done in return.
Standing on the balcony, I gazed at the darkened and starry sky above. Silence surrounded me as I took a glimpse at the deserted park before me. Memories bombarded my mind. As a young girl, the park was my favourite place to go. One cold winter’s night just like tonight as I looked upon the dark sky, I had decided to go for a walk. Wrapped up in my elegant scarlet red winter coat with gleaming black buttons descending down the front keeping away the winter chill. Wearing thick leggings as black as coal, leather boots lined with fur which kept my feet cozy.