rapture’s invitation
to a 4-year-old sand singing
in a box little bucket
& tiny shovel someone to play
with past supper sandbox morphs
to vast sahara rapture multiplies
desert of knives fingers
bleed skin seared
by sunlight hearts forget
sweet rough sandbox
becomes memory child’s tiny heart
seared & hemorrhaging burgundy
waterfalls of blood war the end
of advanced civilzation snail
paced migration rapture petitions
again, again rapture’s invitation
to a 4-year-old sand
singing again, again
16 thoughts on "rapture’s invitation"
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i can hear an ice cream truck in the distance.. 🙂
The form here is really compelling and it invites me to read the poem in different ways, which I love the puzzle of
I’m wondering if the puzzle is too hard to unlock. I wasn’t trying to make it a secret just trying to poetically “truncate.”
I don’t think the form makes the poem impenetrable at all! I think that the form, punctuation choices, and enjambment does offer up the chance for the reader to try it in their mouth, which is a good thing for any poem in my opinion–it lets us engage!
Love this evocation of an imaginative childhood. I also like the experimental form.
Makes me 4 years old again. Great poem
in this life of 4 year-olds
stuck to screens,
the sand box is the world
I absolutely agree with what you did here.
The breaks are just enough to give my eye a chance to wander.
You give me a chance here to move around and play with sequence a little. ……lol…..the teletubbies ending killed me !!!!
effective use of white space
Really dig this, and really impressed how you wove the serious turn “waterfalls of blood war the end of advanced civilization” into a seemingly idyllic childhood scene.
I’m thinking people didn’t get that the childhood sand box
Whoops, didn’t finish. The childhood sand box morphs into the Sahara and the child grows up and gets swept up the cycle of evolution where whole civilizations begin and end. The circle game continues
.. over and over. It’s not really a poem about an idyllic childhood but about evolution. I think I need to rework it, revise it. The experiment is not very successful so far. But y’all are good sports!
I got it! Did not take me to idyllic childhood.
But the two meanings of “rapture” may confuse, particularly “rapture multiplies.”
This is so evocative! Wonderful, Linda.
I am drawn to reading this trying to figure out how it is unfolding as I go–it feels as it is in a large space—-It felt like each stanza was a different time period …and that word “morph” set up the thinking that way from the 1st to the 2nd and carried on…..It felt like death in the third time frame—“child’s tiny heart
seared & hemorrhaging burgundy
waterfalls of blood war the end”
there felt a finality–and end of childhood by war–or as it links to the 4th stanza–something more happens there…I am more lost there though, but I still come away with an idea of my own…I feel the sand is so important here and through out–the shifting sands…..made me think about things built on sand..the sandbox..the Sahara….the intangibility but the malleability of sand…..the feel of sand
Thank you for your poem and the way you put space between phrases. I really love it.