This is another couplet, just like yesterday. Don't really want to seem as though I am "cheating the system" as it were, but writing couplets and calling them "poems" - this one actually has the image of a running river, through tall jagged mountains, a pale grey sky, 50 foot tall pines trees as the only witnesses to the action in the poem. The picture of the river in my head is from a river that I saw while driving down from Whistler toward Vancouver in British Columbia. I think it's called the Squamish River, but I might be wrong. Still, that titled the poem.
Squamish River Walk
Old man walks into the freezing river.
The quiet death of a faithful son.
Originally I had "frozen" because that indicates the stopping of time. "Freezing" suggests motion, which I suppose is what I really mean, although I do prefer the sound of "frozen" over "freezing" because "freezing" is also subjective, whereas "frozen" is not.
Lastly, after I wrote it I also realized this was a dig at my writing teachers who always called me "too adjectival." There's FOUR adjectives in this puppy - almost half the words! Ha! And run them through your head in order: Old, Freezing, Quiet, Faithful. Taken in sequence, they all describe the man.
The old man is also a faithful son. What happens in between is supposed to prove that, but how? How does killing yourself by walking into a freezing cold river make you faithful?
I suppose we should ask the old man, but he's not talking. At least not any more.
MR
2016-0107
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