Analysis of Digging to the Limit



Today’s dubitable Easter light
had me going outside, to see
if some gardening would help
to make the day a little brighter.
From the high grown pile,
where I had been massing cuts
and plant waste, broken branches
of the pruned butterfly-bush
had slipped off onto the pavement.

So I took a shovel to rearrange it
in a corner, for more support.
But when digging in the bottom part,
where things had nearly composted,
a small settlers’ panic broke loose
in the form of running centipedes
and a loud and anxious buzzing,
of what I guess were bumblebees,
rudely disturbed in their sleep.

The only thing that seemed
appropriate to me, was to apologize
and put their roof back in place,
so the damage could be mended.
After all, I had been inviting them
to make this waste-hill their home
by leaving it unattended. The sun
then smiled from behind the clouds,
while the buzzing stopped, and
my intrusion ended.


Scheme ABXXXXXXX XXXAXBXBX XXXXXXXXXX
Poetic Form
Metre 011101 11101111 1110011 110101010 10111 1111101 0111010 101101 11110010 1110101011 00101101 111000101 111101 01101011 0011101 00101010 111101 1001011 010111 01001111010 0111101 10101110 1011110101 1111111 1101001001 1110101 101010 101010
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 881
Words 160
Sentences 7
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 9, 9, 10
Lines Amount 28
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 240
Words per stanza (avg) 53
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Submitted by ludy_b on May 14, 2021

Modified by ludy_b on May 16, 2021

48 sec read
13

Ludy Bührs

The topics she writes about are very diverse, so are the poetry styles she applies. As a Dutch translator and poet, having lived in Cambodia's capital city Phnom Penh for 2.5 years, in 2008 she published "Op de ruïnes van een rijk" (On the Ruins of an Empire) ISBN 978-90-8834-483-1 with 60 poems based on her experiences there. In 2007 she received a Certificate of Accomplishment as one of The Best Poems and Poets of 2007 issued by poetry.com and the International Library of Poetry for her poem Choked Truth, her own translation of "Verstikte waarheid", one of the poems in the book. Born in 1956, she still works as an independent translator, translating from English into Dutch. more…

All Ludy Bührs poems | Ludy Bührs Books

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