January in Muscatine

[Suzanne]

January in Muscatine


I hear a train whistle wake me.
Another Sunday in a small town
where houses, old-white and wooden
are adorned with porches waiting
to be occupied in afternoon hours

when the sun will lay itself along
the uneven concrete sidewalks
and encourage bare branched buds
to keep holding on;
spring will soon come to excite them.




I hear a train whistle wake me,
another Sunday in a small town
where houses are old-white and wooden,
adorned with porches waiting 
to be occupied in afternoon hours

when the sun will lay itself along
the uneven concrete sidewalks
and encourage bare branched buds
to keep holding on;
spring will soon come to excite them.







.

[Antcliff]

Hi
Like this.
The first line..."I hear a train whistle wake me". We hear train whistles..knowingly or not. We are woken by them. But do we hear them wake us? Sounds impossible. But I think that helps because the image produced by the line is therefore of someone slightly outside themselves, almost hovering over whilst sleep happens and then hearing the sleeper woken up. As if they were really awake before.... also waiting like buds+porches.
Compare with "I see a man wake me".

Note sure about "another sunday". It possibly hits a distracting note of weariness?

And...what a delight you were to duet with.
Ant

[Arian]

I see you're continuing your exploration into new thematic territory, Suzanne. And with some pleasing results.

I liked

the sun will lay itself along
the uneven concrete sidewalks

particualrly.

Hope you're enjoying the (no doubt) crisp air of Muscatine!

cheers
peter

[anaisnais]

i really enjoyed reading this, I too imagined you waking from the first lien, and then the 'another Sunday morning' reference taking me to believe you were tired of Winter holding out so long, grateful of Spring entering - longing for those warmer days when you would not just have the company of the sun and its shadows on the porch... and yet at same time not dismissing the beauty of Spring in with the buds... I can feel your love of nature coming forth as you awaken, as if at this time of year this actually a time of day you favour waking with your coffee or whatever looking out on the porch whimsically... Very nice...

[Vincent Turner]

"whistle wake me" is a great turn of phrase and the poem's quality does not drop from there on.

I envy people who can write poems like this.

Full of detail, and atmosphere, yet still restrained and not overloaded...

Peter is right the concrete lines are wonderful as are the last two lines.

V. Nice

Best Regards

Vincent

[Inky]

Evocative poem of the small town. I like the way you slide from early morning to afternoon, and from the January of the title to the waited-for spring of the last line. The atmospherics are excellent: "another Sunday in a small town;" the "old-white, wooden" houses with their porches; the" uneven concrete sidewalks."

I'd suggest a couple of changes that might help keep it from sounding too much like prose:

1) where houses are old-white and wooden,
adorned with porches waiting
to be occupied in afternoon hours

might become

where houses, old-white and wooden,
are adorned with porches waiting
to be occupied in afternoons.

and

2) and encourage bare branched buds
to keep holding on;
spring will soon come to excite them.


could become

and encourage branch buds
to hold on until
spring come.

[David]

Very nice, Suzanne. Muscatine is not what I expected at all. (I was expecting North Africa for some reason.)

I got a bit of a WCW vibe from this, which can't be bad. It's the urban scene, I think, the houses, the pavements (the sidewalks). I like it. And didn't he do a Spring thing too?

Cheers

David

[k-j]

Like David, when I hear Muscatine I'm thinking wine country! Or Oman. Somewhere not too chilly anyway, even in January. But that's beside the point.

I do like the lazy tone of this piece. I think you could pare it down a bit more though. For example, do you hear the train whistle wake you, or does it just wake you? I think you could lose "adorned" too. "Bare branched buds" sounds slightly odd to me too - the trees are branched, not the buds? Probably too pedantic, after all it's clear what you mean.

The train whistle is a great start, the houses, the concrete sidewalks and the last line are just enough connected images to make this a good self-sufficient poem.

[camus]

Lovely stuff.

Perhaps:

I hear a train whistle wake me.
Another Sunday in a small town
where houses are old-white and wooden,
adorned with porches waiting
to be occupied in afternoon hours

Just a stop and a cap, but perhaps that short ponderance makes a difference? Well it does for me. Obviously take or leave.

You be writing some good shit mamma.

cheers
Kris

[Suzanne]

deltaqueenmuscatine.jpg (79.75 KiB) Viewed 2089 times

"I remember Muscatine for its sunsets. I have never seen any on either side of the ocean that equaled them."
MARK TWAIN


Thank you all.
Muscatine is just a little town on the Mississippi River. Mark Twain lived there a while and wrote for the Muscatine Journal. The MJ also recent covered this downtown event:
http://muscatinejournal.com/newt-in-mus ... 963f4.html

Thank you all.
I will edit when I have more time but really have enjoyed the feedback.

Warmly, I greet you.
Suzanne

[Suzanne]

Slight edits on your feedback.
Thanks again.

Suzanne