A single cricket
sounding a single sharp cry
as the moon appears
Published by
Michael J. Barney
Michael J. Barney works for a multi-national insurance megalith (not, alas, the same one as Wallace Stevens) where he toils day and night to facilitate the transfer of wealth from one pocket to another within the same pair of pants. In his spare time he scribbles poems, dotes on his wife, speculates on why Leonard Cohen and Jacques Brel are not as popular in America as Ricky Martin or Britney Spears and runs Gravity Presses (lest we all float away) Inc., a small press publisher of poetry chapbooks and a quarterly magazine, Now Here Nowhere. He can be contacted at mikeb50 at hotmail.com.
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10 thoughts on “”
another example of your unique abilities.
my only suggestion would be, an elimination of certain words.
In Bob’s suggested rewrite he has stripped Michael’s haiku of all of its poetry. If I was to rewrite it myself, the only deletion that I would be the second “single”, but I would rearrainge the words and lines to help emphasize the synchonicity between the moon and the cricket’s chirp:
as the moon appears…
a single cricket sounds
a sharp cry
The original version is a little too close to being a sentence:
A single cricket sounding a single sharp cry as the moon appears
another example of your unique abilities.
my only suggestion would be, an elimination of certain words.
case in point:
a cricket…
sounding a chirp
as the moon appears
in this case, less is best.
In Bob’s suggested rewrite he has stripped Michael’s haiku of all of its poetry. If I was to rewrite it myself, the only deletion that I would be the second “single”, but I would rearrainge the words and lines to help emphasize the synchonicity between the moon and the cricket’s chirp:
as the moon appears…
a single cricket sounds
a sharp cry
The original version is a little too close to being a sentence:
A single cricket sounding a single sharp cry as the moon appears
gK
gk, at times, things are mer-i-to-ri-ous on being stripped bare, to allow one a sampling of their essence …
rubbing to keep warm –
cricket’s chirp
highlights the darkness
forest path
crickets cry out
the dark void
slicing
my night
cricket’s shrill
no doves cooing
spring-rain soaked streets —
no moon tonight
–
The sharp cry
of a songle cricket –
the moon is rising
ominous clouds
billowing greys and whites —
behind them all, blue
Really a single cricket…
but the moonlight and its cry
fill up all the field
midnight, in sight
blacken countryside
following that white line