Wasteland

They told me how winter
strung the skyline with garlands of
stars and staccato limbs, and how
the night air bit chapped lips. And
they told me

how these lips
sung as spring spun
sweet silence in a three
four tempo, lullabying the days
that crept like chloroform across their eyes. And how

summer sighed, and
collected their sleepdust where
the air ran low beneath the
rushes, the grasses, scratching
whispers into the sunlight, feathered
with dreams. And

they told me how autumn
was absent – still
broken from the fall. But no

body thought to tell me how
nature is shelved and flawed;
how time lags; and how

the seasons can be thrown away
in plastic bags.

* * *

Written for my school's poetry competition of which the theme was 'the seasons'.

I drafted and redrafted this so many times, and it has come a long way since the first draft. The subject matter has changed loads during this time, from the death of a loved one to climate change. I really, really wanted to get away from the massively over-used 'spring is like this, summer is like this...' structure that is a trap all too easily fallen into when writing about the seasons. Same with crappy metaphors with the weather echoing the seasons of someone's life.

So here is something that does not quite escape the trap, but does not fall straight into it.

Some days I love it, others I hate it. Definitely not competition-winning standard, but then I would never really choose to write a poem on the seasons, so it was enough of a task to write anything at all. Not sure if I'll submit it or not. I guess we'll have to see if I can muster up some more traditional poetry shizz before the deadline...