Thoughts After The Flight to Bermuda*

[spraycan]

Full heavy fruit on every tree.
The piping of a kiskadee.
A generous sun pours down on us,
its light caress on hibiscus
that out of every rock and stone
seems to have pushed, and bloomed, and grown.
The coral sand, so soft and hot,
this is the pleasure we have sought
and travelled all these miles to find.
In the evening, mild and kind
we drink out on the patio
absorbed in moon-lit ocean's flow,
while thoughts of sun-bright beauty fly
all freely through our mental sky.

To have this Eden wasn't hard.
I bought it with a credit card.
And spent a lousy afternoon
packed in a plane with no leg room.
But still I can't help wonder if,
as I stretch legs gone numb and stiff,
Marvell's poor pilgrims loved it more,
because they had to row ashore.

(*With apologies to Andrew Marvell.)

[camus]

spraycan,

I enjoyed the atmosphere created in the first stanza, these lines especially:

"its light caress on hibiscus
that out of every rock and stone
seems to have pushed, and bloomed, and grown."

I can almost smell the hibiscus, without any nasal metaphor/reference, nice flow.

I would say cliche ahoy! -

"absorbed in moon-lit ocean's flow,
while thoughts of sun-bright beauty fly"

I also found the transition from descriptive in the first stanza to pessimistic in the second a bit of a jolt, I see your reasoning and the ideas for the poem, just not sure it really works?

Perhaps the second needs a subtle re-work.

cheers
Kris

[David]

Smarvellous!

[twoleftfeet]

Hi spraycan,

I thought at first that verse 1 was a bit cliched and twee, but it only heightened the contrast with the wordly-wise second
verse.

It's probably a truism.

Nice one
Geoff

[spraycan]

The twee-ness might make more sense after reading this: http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/bermudas.htm

Or then again, it might not.