I am making excellent progress on the “Mist from the Mountains” sketches. It may be that the three directions being explored are sufficiently divergent to become poems in their own right. It is too early to tell, but I am eager to see the outcome!
Month: September 2019
I spent the afternoon baffled by cracking sounds coming from a pine tree (you will hear it if you listen closely to the video audio below). At first, I thought it must be an animal picking at its bark or branches; then it occurred to me that today is the first hot day (35°C/95°F) of the South African spring—it is the pine cones opening in the heat!
Given what I have written thus far, it seems to me there are three directions for the “Mist from the Mountains” draft before me: a gentle reflection on its passage across the mountain (a one-quatrain composition); a vignette of the same with an allusion to the “Shepherd Girl” anecdote (ditto); and a foreboding account of the mist advancing and the shepherd girl retreating (a two-quatrain composition). I must now develop each direction fully to see which results in the better poem. Write ho!
Forgotten Fields 