Somedays

[bairnsidhe]

 

Some days are lace

Ribbons and bows

Sugar and spice

And everything nice

 

Some days are for the girl.

 

Some days are leather

Denim and flannel

Snips and snails

And puppy-dog tails

 

Some days are for the boy.

 

Some days are for swirling
Cotton skirts over soft leggings

Because they are also for forts

And crawling through bushes

 

Some days are for both.

 

It’s a special kind of freedom

It’s a special kind of cage

That the ever-shifting winds

Blow in who the child is today

 

Some days are for the fight

 

Against all the demands of
Steady earth-bound folk

Who don’t see why the wild

Wanders free in some spirits

 

Every day is for the soul.

 

Shifting as the flickering flame

And as steady and noble

As the ebb and flow of tides

The other element’s children

Every day is for hope.

Hope that someday
Our children's children
May be as they are
And someday be free,

 

To have their days too.

Comments

Wow!

[ysabetwordsmith]

This is AWESOME. :D

Re: Wow!

[bairnsidhe]

Thank you! I quite like it as well, although the ending strikes me as sticky a bit. I would certainly not say no if you felt like offering con-crit. (puppy-eyes at the sempai who has noticed me)

Re: Wow!

[ysabetwordsmith]

*bow*

You did a great job of keeping the structural pattern in this poem, and the subject is handled well.

Now look at line length. In two places, you have very short lines amidst longer lines:

Some days are for swirling cotton skirts
Over soft leggings
Because they are also for tree houses
And crawling through bushes

Against all the demands of steady
Earth-bound folk
Who don’t see why the wild
Wanders free in some spirits

That can make a poem a little harder to read as people move from line to line. Think about how you can phrase things, or move stuff around, to keep lines of similar length if that's a pattern you have established. It's perfectly possible to have a poem of alternating short and long lines, but you have to set it up that way.

When you're writing free verse, you can shape things pretty much however you want, but humans are creatures of habit. If you start out by making anything that looks like a pattern, they tend to expect it will continue and can be jostled if you break it. Sometimes breaking a pattern is desirable, if you want to create tension or emphasis, or follow along something breaking in the narrative. It works best at the beginning or end of a poem. Experiment with it, see what works for you.

In case you're curious, two of my favorite books on poetry are The New Book of Forms by Lewis Turco and Creating Poetry by John Drury. I also have two chapters on poetry in my book Composing Magic. Online check out The Poets Garret.

Re: Wow!

[bairnsidhe]

That's what was going wrong! Wow, it was so simple, but it tripped me up so badly without me seeing it. Thank you, a second set of eyes really helps. I'll add the recc'd reading to my resource list, and fiddle with fixing the two speed-bump lines.

Re: Wow!

[ysabetwordsmith]

I'm glad I could help. Used to make this mistake a lot myself, because I was really listening to the stresses and not paying as much attention to the unstressed syllables. Eventually I realized that form poetry sounds better with a consistent pattern of stress, although it doesn't have to be the same number of syllables in every line. Ballads often alternate even and odd numbers.