FreeWrights Peer Review™

Just one more waltz with you


The post-operative suite forms a U.
Beyond the sterile seams
of whispering doors creeps morning.
Hours before a hopeful dawning
you’re still awake and I am too—
yet another night seen through.

Each hour the nurses bustle through
to check your vital signs. You
prefer it when it’s just we two,
or that’s the way it seems.
Asked is it time for dawning,
I say it’s three in the morning.

It’s three o’clock in the morning
we’ve danced the whole night thru
and daylight soon will be dawning
just one more waltz with you
that melody so entrancing
seems to be made for us two—

If you can croon then I’ll try to
learn the words by morning.
Ah, how appropriate they seem:
From bed to loo we’ve waltzed on through—
taking the IV stand with you—
scant hours before the dawn.

The reason for night is dawning:
I’m honored that you’d want me to
pass darker hours with you.
Although you’ll send me home this morn,
I’ll feel you close all through
my daylight drudgery—the seam

between my time with you, a seam
begun in threads of dawn.
A spreading sun has splintered through
the maple leaves into
warm shards of red. And the mourning
doves call for rain, but your

song seems more inviting: one-two-
three until dawn—morning’s
shining through!—just one more waltz
with you.

Allen. Knowing very little about the form i won't comment on it, but i find the poem itself, incredibly romantic.
Sorry, that's all i got.

k

allen wrote:Just one more waltz with you


The post-operative suite forms a U.
Beyond the sterile seams
of whispering doors creeps morning.
Hours before a hopeful dawning
you’re still awake and I am too—
yet another night seen through.

Each hour the nurses bustle through
to check your vital signs. You
prefer it when it’s just we two,
or that’s the way it seems.
Asked is it time for dawning,
I say it’s three in the morning.

It’s three o’clock in the morning
we’ve danced the whole night thru
and daylight soon will be dawning
just one more waltz with you
that melody so entrancing
seems to be made for us two—

If you can croon then I’ll try to
learn the words by morning.
Ah, how appropriate they seem:
From bed to loo we’ve waltzed on through—
taking the IV stand with you—
scant hours before the dawn.

The reason for night is dawning:
I’m honored that you’d want me to
pass darker hours with you.
Although you’ll send me home this morn,
I’ll feel you close all through
my daylight drudgery—the seam

between my time with you, a seam
begun in threads of dawn.
A spreading sun has splintered through
the maple leaves into
warm shards of red. And the mourning
doves call for rain, but your

song seems more inviting: one-two-
three until dawn—morning’s
shining through!—just one more waltz
with you.

enjoyed the sentiment but the rhyme feels pushed in "we two" the piece works but I don't know for this reader it just could have been stronger

Hmm, not sure what I can do about that. Sestinas don't call for rhyme. The rhyme pattern results from the song lyrics (S3) around which this was built. Without the song, there is no poem.

Thanks for taking the time to express your feeling.

Allen

an excellent rhythm carries the reader through this piece. Good sounds throughout. Not sure what you can even change.

It's always a pleasure to read you, Allen. It shows no matter how different we are, or how many generations apart, I always find that certain familiar thing with you. It's a treat - most stuff I read look like an engineering manual, or feels like bathing in a foreign substance. Congratulations by the way on being selected in the contest last month - it was the best out of all of them...in fact, it was the only one I liked (acquired taste, indeed, my friend...).

A waltz at a hospital. it is very cinamatic. Nice Allen. The rhyme seemed a little studied at times. But I am terrible at rhymed poems.

Sergio

Thanks, Steve. I've let poems go to the IBPC before they were truly finished--I thought they were but was wrong. I hope this one is.

Shucks, Bernard, I'm honored. Really. I'm glad to hear that anyone likes mine best, but especially when it comes from a peer as stylistically different as you are from me.

Hi, Sergio, thanks for checking it out. By studied, do you mean contrived, cliche, ...? As I mentioned earlier, the rhyme was not intentional, but unavoidable as I chose a sestina as my vehicle and built the sestina around song lyrics that my grandmother sang to me--via the Crazy Eights Syndrome--after I answered that it was 3 in the morning.

Thanks again,

Allen