How did you learn to touch so gently?
Able to caress the silence of night,
Left hand as soft as the right.
It must have taken practice,
Sweet and gentle practice.
How did you learn to glow so golden?
I’ve seen this color on you before,
On a beach far away,
The sun setting like a volcano in the sky,
My toes raking through the sand,
As we were bathed in warm and golden light.
How did you learn to touch so gently,
And how did you learn to glow so golden?
It must have taken practice.
Sweet and gentle practice.
I love the imagery in this one–some of the lines in this are especially well-constructed.
(ex: Able to caress the silence of night,
Left hand as soft as the right.)
I feel this one is a bit different for you, or at least the style has a “sentimental” quality I haven’t seen from you before and the rhyming isn’t something you often indulge in, although you’ve done it very well here. The whole poem has a softness to it– it reads so easily, and I really like that. I think because it is addressed to “you,” reading it is almost complimentary… although it’s obvious the speaker is addressing a close acquaintance…
I agree with plaid on the imagery of the second verse, its so gentle and hypnotic it transports the reader subtly but completely. It’s interesting that the line “the sun setting like a volcano in the sky” itself is a rather violent image, but nestled as it is in the middle of this poem it too is subdued and has the same pleasant sense, like a memory.
The ordering of the lines is interesting to me– or how it’s able to rhyme/flow so smoothly despite being “unusually” structured, having 3 verses of 5, 6, and 4 lines. Looking again I see that the only true rhyme is between lines 2&3… but it almost fools the reader early and the rest *seems* to rhyme although it is mainly driven by repetition. You’ve pulled some sleight of hand here, melting the reader with flowers of silk.