Outside My Window Xii Poem by Frank Avon
Outside My Window Xii
Once again
I look upon
what's left
as summer moves along:
the grass is browning
from those dry, hot days
of late July,
some spots are bare
today is cloudy
but now in late August
little thundershowers
are not sufficient
to retrieve verdure
that flourished earlier
nor to engender
late summer splendor.
Impatiens are leggy,
cosmos going to seed
roses sullen
holding back their blooms
are letting them shatter
too soon, retaining
their shape and color
only a day or two,
bachelor's buttons
have a few blue blossoms
but mostly seed pods
on dusty brown stems,
the foliage
of the giant hibiscus
has been shredded
by Asian beetles -
that's about all,
though the hardy zinnias
and marigolds
are spreading wide
and wider,
their yellows, orange,
bronze, fuchsia, whites
and pinks assertive,
and from one to another
abuzz with life,
busy gathering nectar
flits one hummingbird.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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4/18/2024 10:53:35 PM # 1.0.0.1119
I just l-o-v-e this poem, and not just in some abstract generalizing way. Rather I love it for its overall AND its details which create a body of imagery. I should add we both write poems in a formal stanza pattern uniform throughout the poem which entails some striking enjambment moments. (Before I make my next statement, let me assert, I believe in Pride, not vanity, that little twerp, but PRIDE which swells inside when you have worked hard and long.) We are both very skilled at unifying a poem by means of the stanza; it imparts solidity to the whole. Admirable specificity of named plants and flowers gives density to imagery. Theme of ineluctable passage of time is nobly handled: this poem acknowledges time's effects but doesn't surrender to despair. There is simply too much beauty to appreciate every moment and it is this sense of beauty that I take with me - after my second reading!