Analysis of Cactus Seed
Lola Ridge 1873 – 1941
Radiant notes piercing my narrow-chested room, beating down through my ceiling— smeared with unshapen belly-prints of dreams drifted out of old smokes— trillions of icily peltering notes out of just one canary, all grown to song as a plant to its stalk, from too long craning at a sky-light and a square of second-hand blue.
Silvery-strident throat—
so assiduously serenading my brain,
flinching under
the glittering hail of your notes—
were you not safe behind… rats know what thickness of… plastered wall…
I might fathom
your golden delirium
with throttle of finger and thumb
shutting valve of bright song.
But if… away off… on a fork of grassed earth
socketing an inlet reach of blue water…
if canaries (do they sing out of cages?)
flung such luminous notes,
they would sink in the spirit…
lie germinal…
housed in the soul as a seed in the earth…
to break forth at spring with the crocuses into young smiles
on the mouth.
Or glancing off buoyantly,
radiate notes in one key
with the sparkle of rain-drops
on the petal of a cactus flower
focusing the just-out sun.
Cactus… why cactus? God… God… somewhere… away off… cactus flowers, star-yellow ray out of spiked green, and empties of sky roll you over and over like a mother her baby in long grass. And only the wind scandal-mongers with gum trees, pricking multiple leaves at his amazing story.
Scheme | A XXBCXDDDX EBXCXAEXXAFXBXF |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 10011011010110111101111011110111110110011111101011111011111111101100111011 100101 1010001011 1010 01001111 011101111101101 1110 1100100 11011001 101111 11011101111 11111110 10101111110 111001 1110010 11 1001101001 11111101000111 101 11011 1001011 1010111 1010101010 1000111 101101110111010110111110101111100101010010011010011010111110011101010 |
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 1,418 |
Words | 237 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 9, 15 |
Lines Amount | 25 |
Letters per line (avg) | 43 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 356 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 78 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 06, 2023
- 1:11 min read
- 272 Views
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"Cactus Seed" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/25888/cactus-seed>.
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