Echo Monthly
Reviewing the Works of Poets, each month, 
with extracts from the best moments..

Alice Thorpe

Most of Alice's 'work' this month has been responsive again, kicked of by Ewan.  First of these was 'A great place'  worth mentioning because it caused Terry to invent the marvellous new term 'animated onomatapaeia' and further stirred Noel to his prose poem..
 

       you think of walking into the cool embrace
       of trees, wrapped and assaulted
       by the blast of the summer cicada storm,
       and the leaf mould comforts  your nostrils
       at every step, the fantails swift swirl
       branch to branch, feast
       on the insect cloud of your passage,
       and a fat wood pigeon sits on a branch
       and will not be moved
       till she has finished her long, long,
       thought.
 

post card poetry, or, as Terry had it 'poetry emotion'. "Rangers" was a more serious kind of thing, part of the conversation about violence:

                         Do killers not
       take aim from behind the shelter
       of a well-kept hedge, or from the deep mud
       of a pastured bunker, find themselves,
       adrift in the smell of fresh baked bread, remember
       balloons at a children's party, wet socks
       drying by a fire, and shake their heads
       before they gentle squeeze this trigger ?

It's a tight little sonnet, one side of the thought that warfare does not take place in a specialized arena, it takes place most often where people live, a place someone wants to call home..

       or is this soldier not a killer?
       death bringer, sob in the night,
                dream  your own
                home fire burning

The theme is returned to in 'the lines have fallen for me' which was inspired by Ewan's online poem,

 EE> Lines drawn on maps
 EE> This is yours this is ours

and contains memories of a comedy in which a white line was painted through someone's yard, betweeen the back door and the outside loo.
 

               Oh these lines ! Drawn on paper in smokey
               rooms another world away: pinned up as
               tactical research, sketch reference for
               minds where braided shoulders brush the walls in
               passages of mirror and of power !
...
                                                    this
               little shape upon your map is home, our
                place to be, 

Two responses to Terry complete the month's activities.. one, in reply to a comment about weasels and jet engines:

       Oh for a soft pelt,
       bright eyes, sharp teeth,
       Oh to run for ever undulate,
       forever,
       straight for the smell of the prey

the other - a comment stirred up by "Paternity"

       All love is
       unsafe, welded by passions,
       and by emotion
       twisted out of true. Yet we,
       such modern humans, tend to think
       of parenthood as mist and roses,
       gentle hearts and sweet correction,
       never for one moment remember
       stuff of the ancients, or the purple pain
       of co-dependency, the writhing
       horror made by feelings
       gone awry.

clumsy when compared to the seamless original this is an attempt to express something deep lodged. the inexpressibe,

                I want
       to see my young
       self sufficient
       in their trust, I learn
       to give away, to turn my back

       sit aloof, sit critical,
       weild the correcting pen

who would give
       shelter, blood and life itself
       all anguish to prevent.
 

       Thus, power to intrude,
       and power to push away,
       and longing to respond, these
       bitter problems rent.

power, bewilderment, potential this is a poem which will, perhaps, one day be written, a sketch on the way to something else. 

*The Princess Challenge*

Came out of Ewan's posting of a 'spooky story' and my imagination. I was
mentally trying the story in other people's voices, imagining how 
different poets in the echo would treat it. Only two responses made it 
to the echo. The first from the ever responsive Bob. 
 

               Princess

       Soft features, a gentle smile
       left upon the faded red lips
       she lies there in the bliss of sleep
       her golden hair smoothed around her shoulders
       all her beauty still shines through
       the mask that death has made.
       why is the pale horse so cruel
       to take one before she has had
       the chance to really live
       the life that should have been hers?
       She will never know the many
       wonderful experiences that life can hold
       destined to die before life had
       even begun to teach and show her
       the joys of pleasure and pain.
       ...

       A princess she was, now but a sleeping beauty
       who has trod her small circle of life

       ...
       so sleep on sweet one
       until the time of death is done.

so beautiful that it might almost have been a painting. A lovely piece of work Bob, thank you for it. 

From Ewan a completely different casting:

       * A Princess *

  Elegantly she stood on the break
  Whipped by cold North winds and South winds
  With a raised arm, rope trailing from the top
  From the top of the Champagne bottle she held
  The sun glinted of the side
  As the wind howled past the steel she cast the champagne
  The bottle exploded on the hard side of yet another ship
  The fragments shattered down, like stars in the night

        Unsinkable like the Titanic
        Where another princess was present
        Deep in the hold
        They still don't know how it happened
        Born 1,500 years before christ
        How The Princess of Amen-Ra
        Caused the sinking of another 'unsinkable' ship

Both poets chose the frozen moment, pictorial, poised on the edge of potential. Bob, that moment of staring into the realm of death - Ewan the moment of launching, the haunting in the hold. 

       contributions from Eddie and Alice never left the desktop.

What a month ! and another great one already flows by. 
 And now back to the echo..

Alice Thorpe