LITR 3731: Creative Writing 2006
Student Poetry Submission with Revision Account

Ron Burton

Walk Among the Winter's Trees

I walked amongst the winter trees,

Naked were their branches.

No color there but brown despair,

Their leaves to pine in brief romances.

And if by chance or godly pardon,

I noticed color in the desolate garden.

From afar my eyes did see,

A songbird that would sing to me.

He caught a wing on winter’s breeze

And gently floated aesthetically

To where I stood in muddy brine

Amongst the trees and thorny vines.

The song he sang, so sweet and bright,

Made me become his proselyte.

He sang of skies devoid of clouds

Replete with sunshine—auspiciously sound.

He sang of flowers in ever bloom.

He sang of Love so ever True.

The songbird beckoned me to leave

The winter and all its barren trees.

So follow I did with trusting eyes

As the songbird thrust himself up high.

The fury born of passion’s wings

Dispersed all clouds and pining leaves.

Glittering against a sky so blue,

My songbird began a song about two.

“There will be two, where once there was one”

And when he was through, he became the sun.

And so came true his prophecy,

In Light and Love the two did meet.

In Trust and Peace, Warmth and Laughter,

The two lived in Happiness forever after.

Poem Writing Process:

I began writing this poem before I ever consciously conceived it.  I was at a Christmas party and met the person I would eventually fall in love with.  The metaphors in the poem basically describe the meeting.  The party was for singles, mostly, and it was so crowded it reminded me of a thick forest where everyone looked the same—lonely.  In such a situation, one would notice someone who stood out, as represented as a ‘songbird.’

Humans are such social animals that it can be a very difficult time when one is single, but when that one person comes along all perspectives change as represented in the poem by juxtaposing a ‘desolate garden’ with ‘barren trees’ and ‘thorny vines’, to blue skies and flowers blooming.  The intent of the poem is to show that one person how special they are in my life, but I believe the poem addresses a more universal idea of hope.

The writing process, in this case, started off easy, but ended up taking nearly three months to complete.  The first three stanzas flowed right onto paper as fluid as ink, because the image was clear—I saw someone in a crowd who caught my eye.  Stanzas four and five, however, took some time because the events in these stanzas did not occur at our first meeting as it might imply.  Months into the relationship is where ‘Love’ replaced infatuation.  Actually, now that I read it, the poem is more prophetic than it is historically accurate, because I predicted an end that came true.

One of the people I asked to evaluate the poem was my sister.  She liked it, but wanted some clarification on the songbird.  There is a spiritual aspect imbedded in the image of the songbird, although I would not call it “fate.”  The bird is a guide out of the darkness of one existence and into the light of a new life.  There is a dichotomy in the songbird imagery:  the bird is the object of my affection, and my inner voice.  The songbird helps me pull myself out of an otherwise unpleasurable experience, so that is why I had him transform into the sun—he is never truly gone, he is always overhead watching.  My sister also inquired about the capitalization.  I capitalized certain words because they describe important characteristics in my relationship that I wanted to emphasize.

Classmate Sheila Rhodes read the poem and said “It is really rather beautiful,” but she had an issue with the last two lines in stanza six.  She expressed that those lines disrupt the rhythm.  And in reading it, I have to agree, so I revised it.  The original lines read:  The fury born from passionate wings—Dispersed all clouds to where horizons meet.  It is a mouth full, so I shortened and referred back to the idea of the songbird guiding me out of the forest (see final version above).

Sheila made a lovely compliment, “It reminds me of a Robert Frost poem.”  Although I have great regard for Frost, I tend to favor William Blake and have been told that my poetry has Blake-like characteristics, as I think this one does.  I prefer the formalism and structure of contemporary poets and try to fashion my work in the same manner when I want to write what I would consider a serious work—one I would present to someone.  I think Stephen Minot, author of Three Genres, seems to frown on poetry that sounds too old, but I personally believe that if we are to truly learn anything from the masters of poetry, emulating them is a great start.  I did not sit down and write this poem thinking: “it has to sound like Blake…it has to have deep meaning…and blah, blah, blah,” but rather, I wrote as if I were presenting the poem to me.  I write for me, bottom line.  Yes, physically wrote the poem for someone, but in the end, I wrote the poem because I wanted to see my own thoughts.  If the poem works, then I am happy with my thoughts, if on the other hand it does not, then that thought, or idea, goes back into a mental file because it is not ready for pen and paper.

Sharing a poem is difficult.  It was hard to let Sheila and my sister read this one, but even harder giving it to the person whom I wrote it for.  But, getting past the initial embarrassment of exposing personal thoughts and the anxiety caused by anticipation and expectation on how the poem will be received, I become a better writer.  Things that seem clear to me, are just that—clear to me and me alone, but by sharing and receiving opinions from others, I can understand my own work better.