Interleaving
by Leigh Ann Couch
Is wind the sound of crackling,
the burn of sudden winter. Is rain the sound
of slapping, the dissolute taste of silver.
Is field that steady reach of your longing
to fly, the dirt beneath surging in waves.
Am I your despair and love a compound of symptoms.
Does wind bend and snap
young pines like pole beans, or is it pitched
through woodlands by planets, their cacophonies.
Is field that steady reach of your longing to fly.
Does rain collect itself and burst the seams of heaven—
you say I entered leaving—or was it thirst,
green and helpless, flooding us with good intentions.
Am I your despair and love an insoluble crystal.
As field might exist to hold back the ocean,
I dread your steady reach. Like the shore,
I’ve a taste for disappearing.
My longing, this rage of dirt surging
in waves of I and thou, this measuring
of how wind is wind, rain rain,
we are finished and these are the elements:
cause and consequence, want and acquiescence—
they keep our periodic places. Need chooses me.
If I could go, I would never leave.
Confessional style, interrogatory voice with conclusive ending.
Periods instead of question marks after questions.
Allusions to chemistry and periodical chart
Four six-line stanzas
One repetition of line six
Some enjambment, two long dashes
Alliterations: “sound of slapping”; “pines like pole beans”; “cause and consequence”;
Five repetitions of “I”, three occur in second stanza
Repetitions of “wind” and “rain” in fourth stanza, “dirt” in first and third stanzas.
Internal rhyme: “wind” and “winter”; “reach” and “beneath”; “snap” and “planets”;
“burst” and “thirst”.
No end rhymes.
Eleven ‘ing’ verbs
Use of ‘thou’—breaks the rule
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