Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.

Rhyme to Free Verse [Spreading Wings]

Original: Not of This Word by Scribbler

Should you see me standing still
eyes unfocused, far away
I'm visiting some wooded hill
where I walked one bygone day.

Or sitting looking at the sky
attention lost amongst the blue
perhaps emmiting a slight sigh.
I'm not really next to you.

The real me only visits here
stopping off from time to time
to check on those whom I hold dear
or dash off some short clumsy rhyme.

Beyond the trails is my true home
where trees are tall and hills are steep,
the places deer and bobcats roam
not among the human sheep.

So let me walk my wilding way
each day at least a little while
that world of green and mossy gray
which lends to me this quiet smile.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Free Verse Revision: The Lover

I cherish you and I cannot stop
This infidelity! Her body bends
outside my window, rustling me
to remembrance in every season.
My young boy's body easy,
boldly natural in her forest

(not among the human sheep)

I cherish you and I see her.
I did not know my could eye experience so much blue-
sunny, stormy, sky, light, steely, carolina, true,
electric, baby--
breathing her in
sighing her out
next to you

I cherish you and I confess
with a clumsy nature poem
like a cheater confesses with gold earrings
and a grocery store bouquet
while secretly drinking wine in sunlit tulip fields

I cherish you, and our life, and our house
that is my inn on the journey home
to where trees are tall and hills are steep,
to where deer and bobcats roam

(not among the human sheep)

Indulge this graying lover, please;
Nature dominates this beast.

Style / type: 
Free verse
Editing stage: 
Content level: 
Not Explicit Content

Comments

This one took a while to get around to conveying the original writer's intent. But I reckon we will see what others think

to write in another's person's voice! I guess I don't have a promising career as a poetry forger ahead of me. I read your poem several times before starting and felt it was, above all, a love poem to a long-term mistress, Madam Nature.

author comment

I completely agree with your "spring board" comment!
We all pick each others pocket, its called inspiration.
I enjoyed both the original, and your piece,

Cheers. Obi.

I can see how you interpreted it as such and once a poet turns a poem loose it is up to others to interpret it as they see fit.In fact this poem was meant to address anybody who happened to see me bemused. The clarity's lacking in defining who the "you" is is My fault

Her body bends
outside my window, rustling.
a remembrance in every season.
a young boy's body easy,
boldly natural in her forest

(not among the human sheep)

I did not know my eye could see so much blue-
sunny, stormy, sky, light, steely, carolina, true,
electric, baby--
breathing her in
sighing her out
next to you

I cherish you and I confess
like a cheater confesses with gold earrings
and a grocery store bouquet
while secretly drinking wine in sunlit tulip fields

I cherish you, our life, our house
that is my inn on the journey home
to where trees are tall and hills are steep,
to where deer and bobcats roam

(not among the human sheep)

Indulge this graying lover, please;
Nature dominates this beast.
-----------------------------------------
Buggered about with by Obi.

it nicely cleans up some of the clunkier parts. I really enjoyed the chance to use someone else's poem as a springboard. Scribbler certainly has a vast storehouse of nature love poems.

author comment

did I miss this? Sorry I'm so late. Arrow's version does convey the general feel of scribbler's poem with an interesting twist by breaking it up into two parts, so that is an intriguing style I will consider in the future.
There's a reversal of words there in the second stanza, though "could" and "eye"
Good job to a difficult task.

Thomas

.
.

...so like my lost dreams...the flood

(c) Neopoet.com. No copyright is claimed by Neopoet to original member content.