Day 25: Prompt to write a poem on a season and which mine is a very different way of remembering a particular season.
My Song of Spring Beyond all Sadness
I read Keats, his poem To Autumn.
How many years ago now
I wrote an essay to spring
using that first line. Where,
did that come from? I have
no recollection of having
read the poem myself, or
of anyone reading it to me.
But begin the essay that way
I did!
I’ll put it down to an earlier life.
You can argue if you like.
My English teacher never raised
the subject of the poem but
I do recall his excitement at the essay.
I was what is called, a ‘mature’
student, coming back to classes.
Came time to sit the exam
I started; but then I walked out;
that being the anniversary of his birthday –
our little son we’d lost.
His hair never soft-lifted
by a winnowing wind.
And then Keats goes on
Where are the songs of spring?
My song of spring
was to my infant child;
his sweet smell, the few hours
I held him, his weak cry.
My lips pressed softly to his fontanel.
He was my spring song —
and gone. I want to scream
a tiny wisp of hair never soft-lifted
by a winnowing wind
memories of five senses
and the exam I could not sit.
Benita H. Kape © 26.4.2019
Day 25: Prompt to write a poem on a season and which mine is a very different way of remembering a particular season.
- Is specific to a season
- Uses imagery that relates to all five senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell)
- Includes a rhetorical question, (like Keats’ “where are the songs of spring?”)
benitakape 