Over the next few weeks of Poetry Classroom, we’ll share poems from Anne M. Doe Overstreet (the teacher of our upcoming 2013 Poetry Workshop). You are invited to discuss the poems—their forms, images, sounds, meanings, surprises—ask questions of Anne and each other, and write your own poems along the way.
Shade Half Drawn
How strange: the only people out, these two
a girl, her aunt or grandmother
strolling
statelier than lilies grow
in weather they make a small crowdedness
for warmth, fly before the rain like chaff
immune to change they come down the block
as they do day after day
in a small pink coat in practical beige
linked by fingers, the walk home from the store
there is no sound
except the shuffle of sensible, rubber-soled shoes,
the tattoo of first heels
lavender along the sidewalk knots
and unknots its fragrance
the light changes around the window,
stretching, the maple shooting skyward
their hands pull apart
and you want to do something
sacrificial, and magnificent, to preserve
those figures under a turning sky that is not on fire
that does not fill with ash, that lowers only fat
snow clouds onto the roofs and ornamental cherries.
Photo by Marc Samsom, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Poem by Anne M. Doe Overstreet, author of Delicate Machinery Suspended.
Check out the upcoming Poetry Workshop 2013 today.
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Maureen Doallas says
An image-rich poem about which so much could be said. I especially like “they make a small crowdedness / for warmth”, “the tattoo of first heels”, “strolling / statelier than lilies grow”, and “lavender . . . / unknots its fragrance”.
You achieve a lovely contrast between “a girl, her aunt or grandmother” through fine attention to details, such as color of clothing and type of shoes, and the way you break the lines and stanzas and sometimes use punctuation and sometimes don’t, enhancing the sense of coming together and moving apart, as happens on a walk with someone, as happens when age differences are great, when life is beginning and ending.
I’m struck, too, by the abruptness and violence of the word “pull” – “their hands pull apart / and you want to do something….” – and how you set up the stanza with “the light changes….” A nice underscore to the severing of connection that inevitably happens.
There’s a great deal of meaning achieved through those line and stanza breaks.
Also like the title, for its implications for the poem’s meanings.
Anne Doe-Overstreet says
As I sit here, fat dry flakes of snow are falling on half-bloomed ornamental cherries. I kid you not!
L. L. Barkat says
i’m liking the finality of “tattoo” that is in tension with the fragility of the lavender and the unlinking of fingers.
this…
is the tension of life.
captured so tenderly.
Lane Arnold says
Statelier than lilies…immune to change…shuffle of sensible
There is a timelessness and a stuckness in these two characters…you capture a sense that makes me feel as if I’ve gone back in time to an old-fashioned era in some small town where change is somewhat undesirable…
Then that mysterious character, Nature, shows up and nothing is the same…the senses are enhanced
lavender … unknots its fragrance
the light changes around the window,
stretching,
And the quiet of snow and the shock of brilliant cherries hints at changes to come.
Lovely images of hope to me.
Anne Doe-Overstreet says
Lane, I think it was the poet Scott Cairns who wrote a piece in which the first act (or pre-act) of sin in the garden was one person ignoring a hand that was held out to them, and I’ve always had that imagine in the back of my head. That moving away from each other in that small gesture. Though here I don’t intend it to be for necessarily negative reasons. But that small connection matters.
Elizabeth Wynne Marshall says
There is both stagnant and static, tender and tough, and an overwhelming quietness to the poem. As if the snow muffled all noise… oh but the other senses are alive..the smells, the lavender, the noting of the sky the sun, the detail, rich with color descriptors of their appearance and age. I love the tattoos of first heels…it sounds as it would appears making its mark in virgin snow. And again..”the shuffle of sensible rubber soled shoes” Wow, love this. And I am taken by the beginning and the end. “How strange” and “ornamental cherries” Not sure why but I love the intrigue and the way in which it pulls me into the poem and leaves me feeling uncertain even suspended a bit at the end.
Anne Doe-Overstreet says
Elizabeth, I’m happy that you see this as stagnant in some ways. I really had that sense of an universal moment preserved. A pause in a small history.
Elizabeth Wynne Marshall says
There is something there which anchors it, heavy, weighty. It is just that “a pause in a small history” and that could be a wonderful book title. Isn’t that poetry micro-slices of moments written in rich detail, frozen, suspended?
Donna says
I’m struck by the vivid imagery, lavender knotting and unknotting, small pink coat practical beige, these two linked by fingers.
Surprisingly I find mysel wondering about the observer (yes, I know it must be Anne Doe Overstreet, but I guess I’m lost in that lavender scene). I wonder where they are being watched from, and who is this watcher and why is she near the window everyday (or wherever it is she watches from). Is it her routine meeting up with their routne which brings the together? Does she look for them now, on purpose? Does she feel a kinship with them now, after so many days of noticing their ritual? Will she feel a loss if they should one day change their route? Is it her aim to be noticed, or does she peek out of a window shielded by lace panels? This watcher and the watched are linked, but not by fingers.
I wonder what is it about this piece that draws me to the unmentioned character? Maybe it’s that the imagery is so sensorial and vivid that the poem creates more than it directly says?
Anne Doe-Overstreet says
Donna, I suppose in a way it IS me, in so far as I am also the watcher at the window (because I write by the upstairs window). But I did indeed want the watcher to be universal, someone paying enough attention to recognize a pattern. And in suburban Seattle, not many of us know many of our neighbors and I found myself happy to recognize these two who walked most days past my house. If I had been out walking, myself, I would have greeted them, but as an observer I felt like it was my job to be attentive to the moment. And it has been a couple of years since I’ve seen them. I assume that the girl is now old enough to be riding the bus to school and is no longer in the care of her grandmother. But I got to witness that moment…
Donna says
Its kind of neat to think that their fingers will always be linked in your poem. 🙂
Paul Pindris says
If only the two knew that this captured moment in time existed, they would surely value it as much, or more, than any formal portrait.