Tides

The serenade springs lightly from your mouth
slipping and sliding along the ground
until it crashes gently at my feet –
a honeyed, silver wave
lapping lightly at the shore of my soles.

Held fast by chains of trust,
I watch without fear as it rises.

from shoe
   to shin
      from shin
         to shirt
            from shirt
               to shoulder

Until I am drowned
in sugared hate.

 
Commentary

Of all the poems I wrote last semester, I think this is my favorite.

Tides, is a prose poem but it has no prescribed form and plays with the presentation of the words on the page in an attempt to evoke the feeling of a rising tide. I think this poem uses the empty space of the page in an interesting way – more so than any of my other poems to date. I am also very pleased with the repetitive “sh” sound that sounds like waves lapping on the shore but I think the best part is that the poem starts off sounding like a positive poem but has a surprise twist at the end.

The poem is one of the few I’ve written that is based on personal experience. I wrote it after I received an unexpected, emotional slap in the face from someone I thought was my friend and I was shocked by the level of derision and judgmental indifference that her words contained. My hope is that the reader will not see the venom of the last line coming and also experience a symbolic “slap in the face”.