Patterns In The Pasture

A pastoral allegory that uses animals and quiet menace to reflect on the recurring patterns of deception, inevitability, and the sorrowful collapse of a well-intentioned but fragile experiment.

"Patterns In The Pasture"


The malinois whimpers at the top of the hill.
His gaze was stirring and his tail was still.
Sensing disturbance so strong and distinct
A familiar heaviness refusing to sink

The sapient creature has seen this before�"
A little over four scores prior.
Like a thundering herd promising destruction,
Truth obscured�"yet clear in its deduction.

The louder and brighter the colors�"
The more potent and lethal the poison.
Red fox crouches and smiles by the door,
As the hens guilelessly think he's their own.

One more by the corner�"and another,
And then there were three.
The gallant rooster slumps in resignation.
'Tis how the end will be.

3 months was a good run, I guess.
The bulldog lived for half a year.
But it's still a painful thing to witness�"
The undoing of an experiment so sincere.

Reviews

[JayG]

Once you establish a metrical cadence, as you do with the AABB rhyming scheme of stanza 1, the reader expects it to continue. But...

S2 = AABB.
S3 = ABCD
S4 = ABCB
S5 = ABCB

That aside, this is all over the place.

S1 talks of a dog noticing something wrong.
S2 S2 makes the absurd claim that the dog has seen it 80 years before (one "score" is 20 years), which is way beyond the dog's lifetime.
S3 talks about loud colors being poisonous, and a fox sits outside a henhouse
S4 seems to say there are three foxes, and that the rooster somehow knows what the hens don't. And the dog seems have to vanished.
S5 Makes no sense at all, and talks about an unknown bulldog and something unstated being hard to witness.

In short, the story that ties it all together and makes it meaningful never made it from you to the reader, because while you have context and intent driving your understanding, the reader has only what your words suggest based on THEIR life-experience, and the context that you provide.

So, some suggestions:

First, for a better understanding of the techniques of metrical poetry, read the excerpt from Stephen Fry's, The Ode Less Traveled. It's beautifully done and quite informative.

Next, dig into a good book on poetic technique, like Mary Oliver's, A Poetry Handbook. It's filled with little gems of insight.