Elegy

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I sat, last night, beside the river. My kayak had filled with water and I left the group to empty it. The blackness came over me in a wave, and this came out.

I love rivers, but this will not be my end.

ELEGY

The river slipped slowly, silently past at a pallbearers pace. The bankside trees hung or towered alternately over the stream, wreathing their own reflections in a myriad of different greens. The sounds of the evening town were starting to fade. The children’s shouts from the park diminishing as their bedtimes took them to their homes. Even the constant roar of traffic began to fade and a respectful silence drew in. As the human noise decreased the sounds of nature seemed to grow in volume. Birdsong constantly narrating their lives, denoting battles for territory and the never ceasing struggle for survival in the woods. Fish jumped, each splash a life and death battle between the predator and its prey. Gradually, inevitably, the light began to diminish as the sun sank below the treeline. Colour bled slowly out of the trees, turning the darker greens swiftly to a mourning black, greying the lighter notes of the willows. On the far bank a solitary hawthorn, white blossomed for the spring, became a wraith standing sentinel over the quiet procession of debris. Much of what floated there was natural, fallen leaves and blossoms, grass cuttings, dust and twigs. Some was the careless waste of a town, too busy to observe or protect one of its greatest natural treasures: bottles, cigarette ends and plastic wrapping, heedlessly dropped from one of the three bridges that interred the river beneath the daily routine of the town.

Beneath a shrouding willow a dark shape moved, a sodden lump of detritus in the river, stirred by a small current or the questing mouths of hungry fish. A shoe detached itself and drifted to the bottom, impaling the mud of the river bottom with its heel and beginning its own journey into decay. Catching the main current he moved slowly, sedately towards the weir by the sewage works. He turned lazily over and rolled, showing now, in a streetlights jaundiced glow, a flash of floral print and then, in the lightning flash of a passing headlight, a patch of lace. In the sepulchral darkness, he bumped up against the concrete of the weir barrage, too large to wash over. The white of the concrete formed a tombstone commemorating his lost dreams and impossible futures. A heron stood below the weir, watching the river, its lone vigil the only respect paid, and he floated on, wreathed in leaves and empty bottles, awaiting the morning’s discovery and oblivious to the coming scandal.

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Comments

elegy

Reads like a bad Freshman English paper. Sounds as if the author has swallowed a dictionary. Nice try anyway
Penny

There was this river

There was this river. There was a body in it.

Hmmmm....

No. Can't see it. Pass the dictionary someone.

What is a Freshman anyway?

Handbags at dawn anyone? ;-)

Tara
x

The strangest journeys start with a single step.

The strangest journeys start with a single step.

The taste of dictionaries is much improved by a few condiments

Hope Eternal Reigns's picture

Hey Tara,

I agree with Grover that this story is a little dark for me, BUT it is well written and though subtle its message is clear enough. The writing is DEFINITELY not in any way substandard, nor full of either itself or $10 words!!!!

I won't say thank you for this as it is a little too depressing. But, please try to see ----- there is beauty and goodness in this world too, even if you sometimes have to REALLY search for it.

with love,

Hope

with love,

Hope

Once in a while I bare my soul, more often my soles bear me.

Don't know!

I don't know anything about college freshmen papers because I've never read one. Seemed good to me but the subject matter was too grim for my taste.
Hugs!
grover

Dark

TaraG,

a dark story. Then it is better to write of the dark than to live it. Leave your pain on the paper and enjoy life.

A good try, a bit dark for me but then I tend towards the *Disney Ending*.

John in Wauwatosa

John in Wauwatosa

What's the problem?

Sorry I don't understand the complaints about this piece. OK, it is not very cheerful; life is like that. I can't find any words that are outside the common vernacular, not at all guilty of sesqyipedality (one of my favorite words that i rarely get to use.).

It is a somber piece; it seeks a somber tone. To do that words are used discordantly sometimes, more adjectives and longer sentences used. All to slow down the reading pace to match the content. This is not an easy goal to reach, and if some redundancy occurs, well those words function to add to the mood, and are valid. If this was told lightly it would be jarring in the extreme.

I haven't read that many freshman papers but if this is a bad one, then freshmen are further advanced than I had thought. (And it says something sad and frightening about the common eighteen year old.)

Nice, Tara.

Find Joy,
Jan

Liberty is more than the freedom to be just like you.

Thanks for the feedback

Thanks to everyone for their feedback.

This was a difficult piece because I wished to evoke the atmosphere of the river that evening which was, of course, tainted by my mood. I could knock a few words out, but not all that many without damaging the emotion. I don't expect this to be very popular. It is distressing and dark. I will try to post a happy piece for next week.

Thanks also for the good wishes. I am in the coming out process, and the worst of my depressions are hopefully behind me, but you never know what will creep up on you when least expect it.

Love Tara,
x

ps. I've been looking for Joy, but I can't find her.

The strangest journeys start with a single step.

The strangest journeys start with a single step.

Keep Looking!

Reply to the PS:

I haven't either; a few transitory glimpses of her maybe, but I'm not even sure of that. But the hunt is a lot better than all the alternatives! And while you're at it, seek passion too. Eventually, maybe, the quests might become reasonable substitutes. I don't know.

Hugs; Jan

Liberty is more than the freedom to be just like you.

I Don't Think...

...that it was the subject matter or the dark mood that was the problem. To be effective, a story/tone poem like this needs to affect the reader emotionally on some basic level. For me, this one doesn't; the writing strikes me as very remote from the situation it describes. Without that emotional pull, some of the more awkward reads (for example, "interred" twice in the same paragraph describing different things, or the misuse of "it's" [it is] where "its" is the correct form) have more impact than they should. Presumably that's what caused the negative reviewers above to react as if they were reading an unsuccessful creative-writing assignment in school. It seems to be striving too hard with too little result.

People react differently, and your mileage may vary, of course.

Eric

I think it works very well

To me, this is a solid piece of writing. The language sets the tone, lending the piece a feeling of distance and silence that evokes the pallbearer's steady pace, which is exactly what she wanted to do. Because that's what the river is, in its way -- the carrier of what is left of the hopes and dreams, loves and life of an individual, moving her remains in silent witness past everything she left behind.

The mark of a good writer is being able to use words to set the stage as well as act the parts -- to touch the emotions through something as rational as turning printed text into thoughts and ideas.

I don't know about the rest of you, but as far as I'm concerned, she nailed it. As Dimelza says, "done deal."

Good job, hon. *smile*

Randalynn

lament

kristina l s's picture

Yes ok checked the Thesaurus for an alternative.
Never been to 'college' so don't know about papers of that sort and we don't have Freshmen, though the equivalent I suppose. If I have any objection at all it's the use of somewhat obvious 'death' words, (pallbearers, sepulchral) there's a couple of others that are less pointed, so...
But hey, a minor quibble. It's yours to write as you see it. On balance it works.
It reads very well to me. Doesn't smack you in the face and leaves the before and after story to your imagination. Not exactly nice, but life often isn't.
Kristina

Subtle changes make a difference

Thanks again for all the feedback. Those of you with negatives I really appreciate. I am striving to use to words to convey meaning atmosphere and emotion and when you reason out your criticism it helps me to improve it. Eric - I have sorted out the it's and the repeated word (which I spotted on Friday, just before I shut down and went away for the weekend).

Those of you who have posted positives, thank you too. It is impossible to underestimate the encouragement you have given me. Joy is out there somewhere, and when I find her, I will write her down and post her here.

Love Tara.
x

The strangest journeys start with a single step.

The strangest journeys start with a single step.