Separation (II) Options

[Adhamh MacAodh]

Tonight my daughter said that the sun
was beneath the grass. She’s six
and doesn’t know how things work.

Tonight I laid on the couch, trying to sleep, staring
at yesterday and the day before that,
everything buried beneath the grass.

I’m thirty-three and I don’t remember what it’s like
to know where the sun goes at night.

[weaver]

Greetings A!
Great to see your stuff here, I'm so happy that a few TCP writers decided to join.
This is an excellent take on the loss of childhood innocence - that first stanza is brill, I can hear a 6 year old saying that and it's true their take on life and what's going on around them is so simple yet so imaginative as they haven't yet been tainted by knowledge!
You've nailed that first stanza so well that it's hard to follow up and S2 and S3 seem a bit too lengthy and less concise although that is the way the adult mind works compared to the child's mind in S1 so it could be argued that this works simply due to that fact. I would like to see S2 and 3 honed a bit more so it packs the same punch at the end as the hook at the beginning.

Lovely work!
Cheers
W

[posthumous]

this feels perfect up until "buried" ... I wonder if you could even end the poem on that word. After that word, there are no surprises. Your ending loses its punch because at the very beginning you say she "doesn't know" so you've already excluded that possibility.

[greenwich]

Very enjoyable . I like the gentle questioning imagery, grass and Sun interlinked, very novel. Well done.

[Eisa]

Hi Adam,

It's good to see you here and posting. This is an intriguing poem and I really enjoyed reading it.

Tonight my daughter said that the sun
was beneath the grass. She’s six
and doesn’t know how things work.

I like the simplistic tone of this, very typical of a child's thoughts

Tonight I laid on the couch, trying to sleep, staring
at yesterday and the day before that,
everything buried beneath the grass.

This Stanza leaves me wondering why you are sleeping on the couch (am I reading to much into this?)
Yes I know that feeling when you can't sleep when you try & evaluate the previous days

I’m thirty-three and I don’t remember what it’s like
to know where the sun goes at night.

I agree that the ending could be stronger and the repeat of 'doesn't know' doesn't help. Perhaps Posty is right to finish the poem earlier.

Food for thought

Eira

[Luce]

Nicely done Adam.

I wouldn't change a thing except for the couch question. Like Eisa, I'm wondering why you're on the couch only because I'm really nosy.

With the above in mind, you may want to change the setting from the "couch" to the "bed". This is to prevent distracting readers like me from the central intent of the poem.

Luce

[danimik]

Hi Adhamh

This just kinda blew me away its so tight and complete. Seems so simply and yet you've spooled in such complexity, such depth of purpose . Simple in language and structure but it says so much.

I used to know where the sun goes. Now I just have the knowledge that I used to know, though that bit of knowledge has been lost to me. But then, at six, I knew far more about how it all works than I do now.

Brilliant, I'm thinking.

Mike

[Adhamh MacAodh]

Thank you all for taking a look at this. It's great to see each of you here. Thanks for the kind words. As for the couch, it's there very intentionally and ties to the title. When I wrote this my wife and I were separated and much writing came out of this. My challenge was to understate that part - I have no desire to out-Lowell Lowell. Perhaps it comes across as confusing, but hopefully not to the extent of removing the reader too much.

Thanks again all.

-A-

[Eisa]

I thought I'd got the couch right and its connection with the title.

I see you have a Separation 3 so there must be a Separation 1 As we haven't seen it here at MM perhaps you might post it too?

Eira