Variations on a Theme - In which I am frightfully Arrogant

[moon_custafer]

I've been spending a lot of time lately, what with my commute to work and all, staring at the TTC's Poetry On the Way posters. The other day I found myself trying to rewrite M. NourbSe Philip's The Hold-Up. Never mind that she's an award-winning poet and I'm not - those last two lines don't do it for me, rhythmically. Here's the poem:

Stripped of leaves,
Surprised --
the trees scrape the grey winter sky
with veined brittle arms.

Eventually I put together a version with the words only slightly rearranged:

Stripped of leaves,
Surprised --
trees scrape at the winter sky
with brittle, grey-veined arms.

Anybody else want a go?

Comments

[bearded-dragon.livejournal.com]

Both versions of this poem seam reasonable. The one word that strikes me as something I would have changed is “veined”. For some reason it really doesn’t work for me. Granted this is only a personal taste issue. I would either keep the original version of the poem except lose the word vein completely, or I would replace the word. My revision of this poem would be

Stripped of leaves,
Surprised --
the trees scrape the grey winter sky
with grave, brittle arms.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

or how about brittle, graven arms?

[bearded-dragon.livejournal.com]

that works as well. It is very hard to say which, if any, is better than another.