ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

sleep walking.


AT THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

At the midnight hour if
you listen carefully,
you may hear the secret sounds
when they’re walking quietly.
Creeping, creeping, creeping,
they’re awake, they should be sleeping.

Is it cold where they are laid
or too lonely in that ground
that they walk along the floors
where the blood-warm lives are found.
Questing, questing, questing,
they’re abroad, they should be resting.

At the midnight hour if
you listen carefully,
you may hear the restless sounds
of them crying quietly.
Crying, crying, crying,
It’s a sad thing to be dying.

I like this, Neville - an original and haunting poem.

Thanks Catherine.

This is very different indeed, Neville. I like it too. It opens up the possibility of so many interpretations of who "they" might be.

I am drawn to poems with multiple interpretation possibilities - sometimes it's good not to spell it all out. That was one of the first pieces of advice David Campbell gave me when I started putting my poems "out there". I've never forgotten it.

Cheers
Shelley

Shelley wrote:

I am drawn to poems with multiple interpretation possibilities - sometimes it's good not to spell it all out. That was one of the first pieces of advice David Campbell gave me when I started putting my poems "out there". I've never forgotten it.

Cheers
Shelley

I heartily agree with what David has said.
If I could venture a comment from my limited experience. Sometimes in our poems there appears some very good striking images and then these images are, sort of, explained. I think we should have faith that the clear concrete image needs no explanation, it will stand on its own as a poetic device. It doesn't matter anyway if there is some ambiguity . As you have alluded to, layers of meaning are intrinsic to poetic expression, I think.

A good example I think is Rudyard Kipling's wonderful poem The Way through the Woods. Kipling simply gives images, he doesn't explain his feelings of the passing of former times, the images on their own do that job so well.

Yes indeed - Kipling's poem is fabulous. I just went and read it again to refresh my memory. Immediately on reading, the visual images of the mind begin to create their own story.

I agree with you that poems which explain imagery can lose their effect. A bit like answering a rhetorical question - so much more powerful when words are left unsaid. Less is often more, isn't it?

Cheers
Shelley

Interesting and effective Neville - well though out as well.

Cheers

Terry

OOh! Spooky, spooky - I am visualizing a zombie walk or shades of Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'. So many different themes have come from these prompts it is quite amazing where peoples flights of fancy take them. Well done Neville - you captured the mood from the prompts and wove a beaut interpretation