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Love’s Seasons

In the heat of the night, when conditions are right,
__Gentle lovers will cuddle and spoon.
It’s a wonderful plan, much more marvelous than
__Any other found under the moon.

When the weather grows crisper and winter’s a whisper
__On the sensitive nerves in your skin,
Just remember warm covers will shelter all lovers
__Once the bone-chilling blizzards begin.

After bright sunny skies make the mercury rise
__And the snow disappear from the land,
Toss the blankets aside, and with eyes open wide
__Look to Spring for the life that you’ve planned.

.

.

Evergreen Perspectives

The monuments of youth have been dismantled,
And every place we played has been destroyed.
On grounds where minor skirmishes were handled
There’s nothing left except a gaping void.

The little child is father to the man,
Or so, at least, we’ve famously been told;
“What demiurge devised this shaky plan?”
We ask ourselves as we are growing old.

The flights of fancy that invade our thought
Are just like those we voiced when we were young,
But apt discretion through our decades wrought
Enables us, at last, to hold our tongue.

Regrets and aspirations still abound
Along the wave-tossed voyage that we charted,
And sometimes our fair craft will run aground,
But never will we end up where we started.

For those of us who’ve been obsessed with winning,
This maxim might be helpful to recall:
Each destination is a new beginning.
To get where we would go, God help us all.

.

.

C.B. Anderson was the longtime gardener for the PBS television series, The Victory Garden.  Hundreds of his poems have appeared in scores of print and electronic journals out of North America, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Australia and India.  His collection, Mortal Soup and the Blue Yonder was published in 2013 by White Violet Press.

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37 Responses

  1. Joseph S. Salemi

    “Love’s Seasons” is one of those perfect confections in verse that we have come to expect from Kip Anderson. Internal rhyme, perfect end-rhymes, carefully constructed dactylics, the interposition of feminine endings in the second quatrain… this shows amazing attention to the details of craft.

    “Evergreen Perspectives” is the deeper poem, as it raises disturbing questions, and threatening resonances.

    Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      “Love’s Seasons” is, Joseph, an anapestic form that has been used by other poets in the past, but as far as I know no one has ever bothered to give it a name. The internal rhyme you note could have been converted to end rhymes on two shorter lines, but this is the way I have always seen it done, and it is how I have always done it. Compare with “Clothes Make the Man” that you published in Trinacria 17.

      Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      “Love’s Seasons” is, Joseph, an anapestic form that has been used by other authors in the past. And this is not my first time. Compare with “Clothes Make the Man” published in Trinacria 17. As far as I know, those other authors never bothered to give this form a name. It is just what it is, no more and no less.

      Reply
  2. Brian Yapko

    C.B., these are two poetic gems which offer the reader much pleasure both in prosody and content. I think Dr. Salemi’s discussion of the skill and excellent taste that has gone into both poems basically says it all. The only points I would add are entirely subjective. I think “Love’s Seasons” with its wonderful meter and internal rhymes would work splendidly set to music. And I think ”Evergreen” manages to be both charming and melancholy in its description of what the transition from youth to growing older really means. The rhymes are very clever, the imagery and allusions even more so, but it is the insight presented through these poetic tools that is most memorable – the idea that “never will we end up where we started” and that “each destination is a new beginning.” That final “God help us all” is a most clever way to end the poem since it can be read as sincerely invoking God or as an exclamation of despair or frustration. Actually, why choose? I think there’s a lot of heart in this poem. I read within it a deeply felt acceptance of bittersweet reality.

    Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      I don’t know much about music, Brian, but I used to. Nothing I had ever intended to express was lost on you, and that’s the bittersweet reality.

      Reply
  3. Mike Bryant

    C.B. these are both special. I wonder if you’ve just wrote them. They are obviously yours… your poetic voice is loud and clear, but it seems that you’ve made the enjambment smoother than usual. Somehow, you’ve made these even more perfect than your usual high standard. Wow.

    Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      Mike,

      I could dive into my convolutive archives, or I could just
      Speak my mind. We agree on almost everything,
      and let’s keep it that way.

      Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      I didn’t write them yesterday, or last month, or anything like that, but I probably wrote them in the last year or so. The smooth enjambment you note is likely due to the fact that each stanza stands as a discrete entity — they don’t run over into one another. Your approval is worth a thousand vain compliments.

      Reply
  4. Margaret Coats

    Love them both! I take “Love’s Seasons” as a spring song of quick anapests dashing through the other seasons to get to the one that’s desired and planned. Maybe a vernal rhapsody for those who have been through it all before? Makes a nice pair with “Evergreen Perspectives,” where the reader’s viewpoints don’t have to match the poet’s for the reader to appreciate the poem. For example, I have new flights of fancy and declining discretion (I was not very voluble when I was young). Still, I see each destination as a new beginning, along with you and the English mystic Walter Hilton, whose “Ladder of Perfection” was a spiral staircase that kept starting and finishing at the same place, but every time around on a higher level. God help us all to persevere in upward motion!

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Yes, you’re right. They are anapests, not dactylics. I tend to hear dactylics because the strong stress pulls my attention.

      Reply
      • C.B. Anderson

        The pull is very strong,
        And when you’re right you’re wrong.
        These thoughts aren’t worth a song.

    • C.B. Anderson

      And there you have it, Margaret, though I notice that your new flights of fancy and declining discretion have gifted us with treasures not heretofore revealed. I hope always to ascend the spiral staircase that leads to realms yet unexplored.

      Reply
  5. Paul Freeman

    I especially enjoyed ‘Love’s Seasons’. The lines with rhymes midway make it positively gallop along.

    Just one thing. In the third stanza, second line, I think perhaps it should be ‘snow disappears’ rather than ‘snow disappear’.

    Thanks for the reads, CB.

    Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      I thought about this for a long time, Paul, and I opted for a compound object of the verb “to make” rather than a new sentence. Mike understood this at the outset. I hope we are clear to one another.

      Reply
  6. Mike Bryant

    Try it like this:

    After bright sunny skies make the mercury rise
    And (make) the snow disappear from the land,

    The bright sunny skies are making two different things happen.

    I hope that clears it up for you, Paul.

    Sentence structure can be as difficult as determining whether an individual is a man or a woman.

    Reply
    • Paul Freeman

      If you add ‘make’ in brackets, Mike, it becomes ten syllable, not nine like every other odd line in the poem.

      Counting can be difficult as knowing that 2+2=4.

      Reply
      • Mike Bryant

        Duhhh… that’s why it’s in brackets, Paul… so you don’t read it aloud but, hopefully, understand the sense of a perfectly understandable sentence. Think of the brackets as training wheels.
        As for the complicated equation you’ve presented, I’m not a mathematician!

      • Paul Freeman

        Sorry. I figured you were one of the 2+2=5 brigade.

      • Mike Bryant

        No problem, Paul. I already knew you were sorry, but thanks for saying it out loud.

  7. Jonathan Kinsman

    Delightful to read but one thing caught this English teacher’s eye: the first line has ‘heat,’ where ‘cool would work better. My Muse will not spoon in June!! Think of Cole Porter (sung by Ella of course), “It’s too darn hot!” It makes the last stanza more effective.

    Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      You make a great point, Jonathan. If I had it to do all over again, then I might have gone with “cool.” I would have rethought the whole poem and come up with something a bit different.

      Reply
  8. Cheryl Corey

    Two wonderful poems, and what an interesting rhyme scheme in “Love’s Seasons”.

    Reply
  9. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    C.B., these poems are beautiful, especially “Love’s Seasons”… I love the lilt of the language and the sentiment – simply gorgeous!

    Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      Anapests rule, Susan, and I’m sure you already know that.

      Reply
  10. Russel Winick

    Both of these poems feature elements that I will learn from. Thank you!

    Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      And the beauty of it all is that you will never need to attribute credit to me or anyone else.

      Reply
      • Russel Winick

        Rest assured I would though. In my profession we always cite authorities.

  11. James A. Tweedie

    C.B. As always you take us on a journey through your imagination in fine style. The form of each poem in flawless and carries the thought so well that it is just as easy to compliment the form apart from the content as it is to compliment the thought apart from the form. The skill is in how well each carries the other forward to a satisfying conclusion.

    I am particularly struck with the open-ended conclusion to Evergreen Perspectives (what an intriguing title) where you say:

    Each destination is a new beginning.
    To get where we would go,

    That summarizes the whole of my life in one sentence! Even now, at 70, I feel as if each day moves me forward towards some as-yet-unknown destination. And that is the mystery, the surprise and joy of life–heading off toward “where we would go” and arriving in a place we had not necessarily expected. “Where we would go” vs. “Where we could go” or “Where we actually go” represent quite different possibilities!

    I loved the poems.

    Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      I’m glad that you appreciated the craft and could relate the whole darn thing to your own life. I would say, however, that “Each destination is a new beginning” is a cliche if there ever was one.

      Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      In your next-to-last paragraph you raise some interesting (to me) grammatical and lexical questions. “Would” is sometimes the past tense of “will,” but sometimes it indicates a subjunctive mood. In the past the word “will,” as opposed to “shall” carried more than just an implication of future actions and occurrences. “Will” was purposive (indicating, in the first person, intention):

      “I will be there” signified a strong intention, and “I shall be there” only indicated a prediction.

      In other persons “shall” carried some intentions of its own. When a king says, “You shall do as you are told,” the command carried with it the monarch’s express desire. And here (then) “You will do as you are told” is simply a prediction.

      It is interesting (to me) that in German willen has little to do with the future tense and much to do with “I want to.”

      Reply
      • James A. Tweedie

        No need for me to duck when something goes that far over my head! Grammar is not my strong suit but comparing the relative merits of “Shall” and “Will” as imperatives is intriguing. I have always been tutored to use “shall” as the emphatic imperative and “will” as less emphatic. “Could” and “would” are both conditional with each implying an “if” whereas “can” affirms that it is possible but without commitment and “may” implies a stronger sense of possibility. And then there is “should” which is sort of an imperative for something that suggests an optional responsibility (and in past tense suggests regret) and “ought” which suggests even greater responsibility and etc. etc. ad nauseum. English has so many of these nuanced words that sometimes seem to overlap. Like I said, “over my head” (lol).

        But let none of this distract from the fine poems you posted. (not to mention that some cliches, like yours, are more poetic than others!)

      • C.B. Anderson

        Don’t worry. young man, because you are already on the right track.

  12. David Watt

    C.B., The internal rhymes in “Love’s Seasons” add even greater enjoyment to a beautiful poem. My favorite line is “When the weather grows crisper and winter’s a whisper”, Your second piece does indeed put the voyage of life into perspective.

    Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      Although you are down under, David, you never seem to be in over your head.

      Reply

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