[Aaron Poochigian]

Garden Sonnet

Summer's end, its stillness, sees me sip
on wine and sink into that risky chair.
Some afternoons I lose myself and slip
my moorings; all that's me takes to the air
and leaves me newer eyes. The garden's filled
with floating seeds: an alien invasion,
curious, adrift and lost, but thrilled
by their mistake, their scale miscalculation.
Parachutists gather on my shirt,
land in my drink, so light the liquid's skin
performs that sticky buoyant trick, alert
to any touch, and clings. Sounds begin:
the world is never still. I see one gleaming
sparrow's wing and look! The sky is teeming.

[Aaron Poochigian]

Pertaining to the sea (the verb “sink,” “moorings,” etc.) and air (“Parachutists”), the major metaphor-groups in this poem effectively destabilize the speaker as he/she sits tippling wine in a chair. The author is particularly good at finding adjectives (“risky,” “newer”) and adjective clusters (“sticky buoyant”) that, in their contexts, are remarkable. The rhymes are effortless throughout, and the closing couplet is epiphanic.

[Catherine Chandler]

Very pleasant and well-crafted, but it would take more than the final couplet to get me excited about this one.

[Ron]

A pleasant but unremarkable moment well-captured, I think. Nice to find things floating and not merely falling, though the parachuting image is relatively fresh, and the concluding image of winged sparrow(s) is a nice close. Salute.

[Roger Slater]

I think this is very well done until the final couplet, which for me isn't epiphanic at all but something of a let-down. We had all those interesting metaphors and fanciful observations about parachutists, aliens, miscalculations, with close observation of details like the meniscus of the wine, and then along comes the climactic couplet and all we are given is a bunch of non-descript sparrows which we are ordered by an exclamation point to find exciting.

Until the couplet there's not much I'd complain about, though the "moorings" metaphor may come off a bit less fresh than I'd like.

[David Danoff]

As gorgeous now as it was when it was workshopped.

[Jennifer Gordon]

Oddly enough, this particular stanza recalls a contrary number of Charles (Tennyson) Turner's as gout left him listing off happier creatures while he perforce rued his "earthbound lot."
Perhaps the special effects of the liquid in hand accomplishes what follows as readers are taken off in a flight of fancy which does seem verily as the Judge suggests, an epiphany of sorts.
Again, metre is characteristically left to capricious timing yet generally adhered to herein, methinks, L's 1, 7, 9, and 14 sassily trochaic in beginning, or correct me.
What I enjoy is the almost atmospheric poignancy developed in this stanza, its imagery capably rendering the suggestion begun effectively. And perhaps reminds us of Wordsworth and why we are where we so contentedly are.

[Mary Meriam]

This is a rare, lovely work of art, entirely to my taste.

[Simon Hunt]

As I think I said when this was at Metrical, I think it has something of Hopkins about it--without seeming fusty. Quite lovely, although I would vote for a re-title.

[Martin Rocek]

I agree with many other comments--I like this a lot, but the couplet needs replacement. The risky chair and slipped moorings almost had me imagine N attaching weather balloons to the chair and floating off like this. This image only added to the delight.