[Catherine Chandler]

Bell Creek Canyon

for Maddy

We kick off, climbing down to the side-creek,

chatting about who knows what. At each burst

of sun there’s more to talk about, the first

wet slide and swim brings laughter, then we speak

of how the light echoes along the walls,

rebounds from off the pebbles, seems to glide

on pools, and catches in the webs, hung side

to side above the creek in intricate shawls.

Almost as if some of our words are bound

on every throw of gossamer we pass

new waterfalls and fern walls need no comment,

till the silk has swept away the sound,

and a fresh silence glitters - here there is

a diamond on the finger of each moment.

Comment by Mr. Gwynn:

I scan the second line as /u u/ // /u // which strikes me as a little rough. In the fourth line the verb should be “bring.” Seems to me that the “we speak” manner (“our words are bound” “need no comment”) gets in the way of the natural description which is pretty though I wonder about the “webs.” Are we talking about Spanish moss or some kind of insect webs or just interlaced limbs? I’m not sure. “are bound / on every throw” also strikes me as a little strange. The last line is very nice.

[Catherine Chandler]

Unlike the hikers in “green”, whoever the “we” are in “Bell Creek Canyon”, they have seized the moment and found diamonds!

The poet is taking some huge liberties with the meter, but the magical quality of the landscape portrayed warrants a freshness that strict IP would only bog down. I believe there's a punctuation problem in the sestet.

I'd like to think the poet wrote of the water and swept-away sound with the mining term, “hush”, in mind, when s/he writes speaks of the fresh, glittering silence in line 13.

[Philip Quinlan]

L11 needs a comma after waterfalls.

In fact this whole passage is a muddle which could do with simplifying:

Almost as if some of our words are bound
on every throw of gossamer we pass
new waterfalls and fern walls need no comment,

Fluidity is fine if sense is preserved.

I don't recall this but I fancy I recognise that smooth, riverine style, and the long, almost tortured, sentences.

Philip

[T.S. Kerrigan]

I don't for a moment believe the author is speaking of actual diamonds or even an actual mine. The metrics are grotesque.

[Spindleshanks]

As I read it, the comma belongs after "pass." Otherwise, it tends to be comma heavy. I think, too, that "side by side" is the more common expression.

I like its flow and picturesque portrayal of the moment, but the comma issue stands in the way of full enjoyment. A small adjustment to L6-8 could reduce the overkill:

rebounds from off the pebbles, seems to glide
on pools and catch among the webs hung side
to side above the creek in intricate shawls.

Peter

[Susan McLean]

Like Spindleshanks, I was confused by the sestet and could only make it make sense by reading a comma after "pass." The meter is rather rocky in spots. I find the poem to be a nice bit of nature description. The turn from chatting to silence is so gradual as to be almost imperceptible as a turn. I like the final image, but the poem strikes me as being more pretty than deep.

Susan

[Petra Norr]

I didn't know where Bell Creek Canyon was so I had to look it up. I couldn't find anything about webs there, though, so maybe the poet will explain what they are. I enjoyed the sonnet and think it conveys well the joy of being in the canyon. The last line is lovely, as others have pointed out. I kind of missed a volta, but maybe that's because voltas interest me and I'm always trying to spot them. I think Susan has a point, though -- it's a subtle volta, a shift between talk and silence. Lastly, the meter: I didn't find it as irregular as others seemed to do. It worked fine for me, both silently and out loud. There was only one line that seemed really off -- L12, which to me is a 4-beater.

[Michael Cantor]

I have no idea what, "a diamond on the finger of each moment" is supposed to mean. - It hangs there at the end of the poem like a glitzy zircon, and unfortunately it's surrounded by too much of the same in the sestet - all that silk and gossamer and "fresh silence" is a bit much. The poem starts well in the octave, and I was intrigued, but my sense is that by the time the writer got to the sestet there was no sense of direction emerging from the poem, and the sestet seems thrown in there - pretty, but shallow - to get to fourteen.

On a minor technical point, the poem migrates from perfect rhymes - and good rhymes, not cliches - in the octave to slants in the last two rhymes, ending on a weak feminine slant. I normally prefer working in the other direction, and ending sonnets on a perfect masculine rhyme, unless there is a real reason for the weaker ending - and I'm not sure there is here.

[Adam Elgar]

This is full of lovely things. I like the metrical freedom – there’s a real sense of a speaking voice throughout and I didn’t find myself being caught out. Same with the freedom of the rhyming. All very natural and engaging.

Lines 9-11 are a bit of a puzzle.
Calling the webs shawls throws me a bit too, since it hasn’t been made clear what the webs are in the first place. Overall, though, this is a delightful piece of work.
 

[Peter Coghill]

Thanks for the comments guys. I think I will change it around a bit. I guess its local knowledge, but I never thought for an instant people wouldn't have thought of spider's webs. One of the most common canyoning experiences in the blue mountains is pushing through the orb spider's webs first thing in the morning